512 


Syracuse,  N.  Y. 


BETWEEN 


S.  TEACKLE  WALLIS,  ESQ. 

»\ 
OF    BALTIMORE, 


AND    THE 


HON.  JOHN  SHERMAN, 

OF   THE   U.    S.    SENATE, 
CONCERNING  THE  ARREST  OF  MEMBERS 

OF  THE 

Maryland  Legislature, 


AND  THE 


MAYOR  AND  POLICE  COMMISSIONERS 

OF  BALTIMORE,  IN  1861. 


01. 


CORRESPONDENCE 


BETWEEN 


S.   TEACKLE   WALLIS,  Esq., 


Hon.    JOHN    SHERMAN, 

OF    THE   TJ.  S.   SE1STA.TE, 

Concerning  the  Arrest  of  Members  of  the  Maryland 
Legislature,  and  the  Mayor  and  Police  Com 
missioners  of  Baltimore,  in  1861, 


v/3 


MR.    WALLIS  TO  ME.   SHERMAN. 


BALTIMORE,  December  12,   1862. 
Hon.  John  Sherman,    United  States  Senate: 

SIR  : — In  the  report  of  proceedings  of  the  Senate  on  the  9th  instant, 
in  the  debate  on  the  resolution  of  Senator  Saulsbury,  my  attention  has 
been  called  to  the  following  paragraph : 

"He  (Mr.  Sherman,  of  Ohio)  believed,  however,  that  the  President 
had  power  to  make  arrests  without  the  forms  of  law.  In  the  case  of  Dr. 
Bachelder  and  the  members  of  the  Maryland  Legislature,  who  were  about  to 
carry  their  State  out  of  the  Union,  he  thought  the  President  was  justified 
in  making  the  arrests." 

I  was  a  member  of  the  Maryland  Legislature  in  1861,  and  was  arrested 
at  midnight,  at  my  dwelling,  in  the  city  of  Baltimore,  about  the  middle  of 
September,  in  that  year,  from  which  time  until  the  27th  of  November, 
1862,  I  was  confined  in  one  or  other  of  the  fortresses  of  the  United  State's 
which  have  been  appropriated  by  Mr.  Lincoln  to  the  uses  of  State  prisons. 
[  have  never,  at  any  time,  been  informed  of  the  grounds  upon  which 
I  was  arrested,  and  I  know  positively  nothing  whatever  in  regard  to  them, 
at  this  moment,  except  what  I  have  seen  stated,  from  time  to  time,  in  the 
newspapers. 

The  commission,  consisting  of  Messrs.  Dix  and  Pierrepoint,  which  was 
created  by  the  Secretary  of  War  for  the  examination  of  the  cases  of  pris 
oners  arrested  and  confined  like  myself,  held  a  session  at  Fort  Warren  in 
May,  1862,  but  I  was  not  vouchsafed  any  communication  as  to  the  charges 
against  me,  or' any  opportunity  of  being  heard  in  my  own  defence,  although 
the  War  Department  had  been  officially  notified  some  time  before  by  Colo 
nel  Dimick,  upon  the  report  of  my  physician,  that  my  health  was  seri 
ously  affected  by  my  confinement.  The  commissioners,  in  fact,  took  no 
notice  whatever  of  my  existence.  Counsel  I  was  not  permitted  to  employ, 
for  as  early  as  the  28th  of  November,  1861,  the  United  States  Marshal  at 
Boston  officially  visited  Fort  Warren  for  the  purpose  of  communicating  to 
my  fellow-prisoners  and  myself  an  order  from  Mr.  Seward,  the  Secretary 
of  State,  announcing  that  no  one  would  be  recognized  by  his  department 
(which  then  had  charge  of  us)  as  attorney  of  any  State  prisoner,  and  that 
the  employment  of  counsel  by  any  of  us  would  be  regarded  by  him  as  a  suf- 
Jicient  reason  for  the  prolongation  of  our  imprisonment.  On  the  27th  of 
November  ultimo,  as  I  have  said,  I  was  released  from  Fort  Warren,  with 
out  conditions  or  explanations  of  any  sort.  The  authority  for  my  discharge 
— as,  I  suppose,  the  authority  for  my  arrest — was  a  telegram.  Under 
these  circumstances  I  am  sure  you  will  recognize  it  as  no  more  than  rea 
sonable,  that  I  should  take  some  interest  in  not  being  misrepresented,  after 
having  been  for  so  long  arbitrarily  and  cruelly  dealt  with  in  my  person. 

While  I  was  a  prisoner  at  Fort  Warren,  I  saw,  by  accident,  in  the  Daily 
Congressional  Globe,  a  speech  delivered  in  the  House  of  Representatives 


on  the  llth  of  March,  1862,  by  the  Hon.  John  Hickman,  of  Pennsylva 
nia,  in  which  he  stated,  upon  the  authority,  as  he  said,  of  the  President  of 
the  United  States,  that  "Mr.  Lincoln  had  thought  it  advisable  to  incarce 
rate  the  Maryland  Legislature  to  prevent  them  from  enacting  an  ordinance 
of  secession,  and  carrying  the  State  out  of  the  Union."  "  The  President 
thought,"  as  Mr.  Hickman  further  said,  "  that  legislators  were  about  to 
meet  at  Frederick  with  resolutions  of  secession  in  their  pockets,  and  that, 
if  left  unmolested,  it  was  not  unlikely  a  resolution  of  secession  might  actu 
ally  be  passed  by  the  Legislature  of  Maryland.  lie,  therefore,  as  a  matter 
of  extreme  caution,  thought  it  better  to  arrest  the  members  of  the  Legislature 
and  put  them  in  jail" 

My  companions  and  myself  were,  of  course,  debarred  by  our  situation, 
when  this  speech  appeared,  from  all  opportunity  of  joining  issue  with  Mr. 
Lincoln  upon  the  truth  of  the  fact  which  it  was  thus  stated  that  he  had  as 
sumed  as  a  sufficient  reason  not  only  for  suppressing,  by  force,  the  Legis 
lature  of  a  State  of  the  Union,  but  for  inflicting  upon  us,  personally,  the 
wrong  of  unlawful  imprisonment,  and  indignities  and  indecencies  which  it 
would  cause  you  shame  and  disgust  for  me  to  describe.  What  Mr.  Hick- 
inan  stated  to  have  been  merely  an  apprehension  of  the  President's — a  thing 
he  deemed  ' '  not  unlikely  " — you  are  now  reported  to  have  asserted  as  a 
matter  of  fact.  I  see,  by  the  report  for  yesterday's  proceedings,  that  one 
of  your  brother  Senators — Mr.  Fessenden — appears  to  have  repeated  the 
same  charge,  in  almost  the  identical  language  employed  by  you,  and  is 
represented  as  not  only  asserting  his  own  belief  in  its  truth,  but  as  having 
added  that  ' '  the  President  had,  no  doubt,  evidence  which  led  him  to  the 
same  belief." 

Such  statements,  publicly  made  by  prominent  Senators,  in  their  places, 
in  open  debate,  would  entitle  the  fact  asserted  to  be  hereafter  assumed  as 
true,  if  none  of  the  parties  interested,  who  are  now  at  liberty  and  who 
know  it  to  be  untrue,  were  to  give  it  public  contradiction.  The  duty 
of  doing  this  devolves  upon  myself,  at  least  as  imperatively  as  upon  any 
other  member  of  the  Legislature  referred  to.  because  I  was  Chairman  of 
the  Committee  on  Federal  Relations  in  the  House  of  Delegates,  and  the 
matter  in  question,  as  I  will  take  leave  to  show  you,  was  brought  partic 
ularly  within  the  scope  of  my  official  knowledge  and  action  in  that  capacity. 
I  can  readily  understand  how  you  and  others  may  have  been  misled  by  the 
falsehoods  which  were  so  widely  circulated  through  the  press  in  regard  to 
my  colleagues  and  myself,  while  our  voices  were  silenced  by  force,  and  I 
cheerfully  assume  that,  as  a  Senator  or  a  gentleman,  you  would  not  have 
made  the  statement  of  which  I  complain,  unless  you  had  believed  it  to  be 
well  founded.  I  trust  I  may  equally  assume  that  you  will  have  pleasure 
in  the  opportunity  of  repairing  the  injustice  which  you  have  done  us,  in 
giving  it  circulation  upon  your  authority. 

The  special  session  of  the  Legislature  of  Maryland,  called  by  Governor 
Hicks  in  1861,  was  opened  in  Frederick  on  the  26th  of  April  in  that  year. 
On  the  next  day,  April  27,  a  select  committee  of  the  Senate  reported  to 
that  body  an  address  to  the  people  of  Maryland,  which  on  the  same  day 
was  unanimously  adopted,  and  was  shortly  afterwards  published,  with  the 
individual  signatures  of  the  Senators,  in.  all  the  newspapers  of  the  State. 

The  principal  feature  of  that  address,  in  fact  almost  the  only  purpose  of 
its  promulgation,  is  developed  in  the  following  extract : 

"  We  cannot  but  know  that  a  large  portion  of  the  citizens  of  Maryland 


have  been  induced  to  believe  that  there  is  a  probability  that  our  delibera 
tions  may  result  in  the  passage  of  some  measure  committing  this  State  to 
secession.  It  is,  therefore,  our  duty  to  declare  that  all  such  fears  are  with 
out  just  foundation.  We  know  that  we  have  no  constitutional  authority 
to  take  such  action.  You  need  not  fear  that  there  is  a  possibility  that  we 
will  do  so. 

"If  believed  by  us  to  be  desired  by  you,  we  may,  by  legislation  to  that 
effect,  give  you  the  opportunity  of  deciding  for  yourselves  your  own  future 
destiny.  We  may  go  thus  far,  but  certainly  will  go  no  further." 

You  will  find  the  whole  address  on  pages  8  and  9  of  the  printed  journal 
of  the  Senate,  which  is  no  doubt  accessible  to  you  in  the  library  of  Con 
gress.  It  could  not  be  more  clear  than  it  is  upon  the  point  in  dispute. 
On  the  29th  day  of  April,  the  day  after  the  address  was  communicated  to 
the  House  of  Delegates  by  the  Senate,  an  opportunity  was  afforded  for  the 
House  to  announce  its  own  conclusions,  in  the  most  direct  and  unequivocal 
manner,  upon  the  constitutional  authority  of  the  Legislature  to  alter  the 
federal  relations  of  the  State.  On  page  19  of  the  printed  journal  of  the 
House  of  Delegates  you  will  find  that,  on  the  day  last  named,  a  memorial 
was  presented  "from  216  voters  of  Prince  George's  county,  praying  the 
Legislature  (if  in  its  judgment  it  possesses  the  power)  to  pass  an  ordinance 
of  secession  without  delay." 

This  memorial  was  at  once  referred  to  the  Committee  on  Federal  Rela 
tions.  Desirous  of  putting  the  question  at  rest,  as  it  was  then  greatly  agi 
tating  the  public  mind,  the  committee  determined  to  report  upon  it  before 
the  adjournment.  There  was  no  difference  of  opinion  among  the  members 
of  the  committee  as  to  reporting  unfavourably  to  the  prayer  of  the  memo 
rialists,  nor,  with  five  out  of  seven,  was  there  any  doubt  as  to  the  propri 
ety  of  stating,  explicitly,  as  the  ground  of  our  recommendation,  that  the 
measure  proposed  was  unconstitutional.  Two  reports  were  accordingly 
made.  You  will  find  them  both  on  page  21  of  the  House  journal.  That 
of  the  majority,  which  I  myself  signed  and  presented,  as  chairman  of  the 
committee,  contains  the  declaration,  in  words,  "  that  in  their  judgment 
the  Legislature  does  not  possess  the  power  to  pass  such  an  ordinance  as  ix 
prayed,  and  that  the  prayer  of  the  memorialists  cannot,  therefore,  be  grant 
ed."  The  minority  report  asks  leave  simply  "to  report  unfavorably  to 
the  prayer  of  -the  memorialists." 

With  the  concurrence  of  the  whole  committee,  I  stated  to  the  House  the 
difference  of  opinion  which  had  caused  two  reports  to  be  made,  and  the 
importance  of  having  the  deliberate  sense  of  the  House,  on  the  question, 
announced  to  the  people  at  once.  The  grounds  upon  which  it  was  believ 
ed  to  be  beyond  the  constitutional  authority  of  the  Legislature  to  pass  an 
ordinance  of  secession  were  then  briefly  stated,  and  a  test  vote  thereupon 
was  taken,  by  common  understanding,  on  the  minority  report,  which  re 
ceived  only  thirteen  votes  to  fifty-three.  The  majority  report  was  then 
adopted  without  a  division.  From  that  time,  down  to  the  forcible  sup 
pression  of  the  Legislature  by  Mr.  Lincoln's  orders,  the  subject  was  never 
again  mooted,  but  was  considered,  on  all  hands,  as  absolutely  and  perma 
nently  disposed  of.  Without  pretending  to  know  what  was  in  the  breast 
of  every  member,  I  know  enough  to  assert,  in  the  most  unhesitating  man 
ner,  my  belief  that  at  the  time  of  our  arrest,  no  individual,  of  either 
House,  had  a  thought  of  again  recurring  to  it.  I  positively  know  that  if 
such  recurrence  had  been  attempted,  it  would  not  have  been,  for  a  moment, 


entertained  in  the  House  of  which  I  was  a  member.  From  all  that  I 
knew  then,  and  know  now,  of  the  purposes  of  the  members  of  the  Legis 
lature  and  their  opinions — and  I  think,  I  was  not  and  am  not  ill-informed 
— I  have  no  doubt  that  if  they  had  been  permitted  to  hold  the  session 
which  was  prevented  by  the  arrests  of  September,  1861,  they  would  have 
adjourned,  in  three  days,  for  lack  of  business  to  occupy  them. 

Not  only  have  I  given  you  the  facts  truly  in  regard  to  the  supposed  in 
tention  of  the  members  of  the  Legislature  to  pass  a  secession  ordinance 
themselves,  and  their  actual  determination  to  the  contrary,  but  if  you  will 
take  the  trouble  to  examine  the  journals  (Senate  journal,  133,  134,  and 
House  journal,  108,  121,)  you  will  further  see  that  as  early  as  May  14, 
1861,  the  House  of  Delegates,  by  a  vote  of  forty-five  to  twelve,  and  the 
Senate  unanimously,  had  adopted  a  resolution  against  the  expediency  of 
even  calling  a  sovereign  convention  of  the  people  of  the  State.  The  rea 
sons  assigned  for  that  action,  in  the  report  which  accompanied  it,  you  will 
find  to  have  been  even  more  conclusive,  when  the  Legislature  was  suppres 
sed,  than  when  the  resolution  was  adopted. 

All  these  facts  are  well  known  to  be  true  by  every  member  of  the  Legis 
lature,  no  matter  what  may  be  his  political  sentiments.  They  were  equally 
well  known,  at  the  time  of  our  arrest,  to  every  man  in  Maryland  who  had 
troubled  himself  to  follow  the  course  of  our  legislative  proceedings.  They 
were  perfectly  accessible  to  Mr.  Lincoln  at  the  time  when,  if  Mr.  Hick- 
man  truly  represents  him,  "he  thought  it  better  to  arrest  the  members  of 
the  Legislature  and  put  them  in  jail,"  merely  because  he  thought  it  "  not 
unlikely"  the  facts  were  otherwise.  If  what  I  have  stated  is  not  true,  its 
untruth  can  be  shown.  If,  as  Mr.  Fessenden  suggests,  the  President  has 
"  evidence  "  upon  which  his  alleged  belief  to  the  contrary  can  be  justified, 
such  "  evidence"  can  be  easily  produced.  I  assert  to  you  that  there  is  no 
such  evidence,  and  that  there  can  be  none,  because  the  fact  which  it  is  sup 
posed  to  establish  did  not  exist.  I  am  willing  to  stake  my  veracity  and  in 
tegrity  upon  the  issue,  and  I  challenge  the  public  production  of  any  proof 
to  the  contrary  of  what  I  have  asserted.  Doing  so,  I  leave  it  to  your  can 
dor  and  sense  of  right,  to  give  to  gentlemen  whom  you  have  been  instru 
mental  in  injuring,  an  opportunity  of  being  heard  in  their  own  vindication, 
through  you,  in  the  same  public  way  in  which  the  injury  has  been  done. 
You  will  permit  me  to  add,  in  frankness,  that  in  what  I  have  said  I  am 
not  to  be,  for  a  moment,  understood  as  conceding  that  Mr.  Lincoln  would 
have  had  the  shadow  of  lawful  right  to  break  up  the  Legislature  of  Mary 
land  and  imprison  its  members,  at  his  pleasure,  "without  the  forms  of 
law,"  even  if  the  charge  which  I  have  repelled  had  been  as  well  founded 
as  it  is  the  contrary.  Upon  that  question,  however,  I  have  no  right  to 
take  advantage  of  the  present  communication  to  obtrude  my  opinions  upon 
you.  Nor  will  you,  I  trust,  suppose — for  it  is  equally  due  to  frankness 
that  I  should  not  allow  you  to  suppose — that  I  have  intended  to  apologize 
for  or  excuse  any  of  the  views  which  the  Legislature  of  Maryland,  in  the 
exercise  of  its  constitutional  and  rightful  functions,  saw  fit  to  adopt  and 
promulgate,  at  the  session  referred  to,  concerning  the  sectional  struggle 
which  has  since  assumed  so  fierce  an  aspect  and  such  gigantic  proportions. 
Those  views  may,  of  course,  be  erroneous — for  legislatures  are  not  more 
infallible  than  congresses  or  presidents — but  they  were  entertained  and 
proclaimed  in  good  faith,  upon  mature  consideration,  concerning  questions 
which  deeply  interested  us  and  our  people,  and  on  which  we  had  a  right, 


and  were  bound,  as  individuals  and  legislators,  under  the  free  institutions 
of  the  country,  to  form  and  express  our  opinions  without  let  or  hindrance, 
or  fear  of  president,  commander-in-chief,  or  any  other  functionary  or  citi 
zen. 

I  have  said  that  those  opinions  may  be  erroneous,  but  I  believe  them  to 
be  otherwise.  I  believe  now,  as  I  believed  when  they  were  adopted,  that 
they  were  just  and  wise  and  patriotic,  and  I  am  proud  that  my  humble 
name  was  connected  with  their  assertion.  I  am  none  the  less  proud  of  it 
because  the  experience  of  the  bloody  and  disastrous  season  which  has  in 
tervened  has  confirmed  their  justice,  or  because  there  are  tens  of  thousands 
now,  throughout  the  country,  who  are  beginning  to  concur  in  them,  for 
one  who  was  even  disposed  to  deal  fairly  with  them,  at  the  excited  moment 
when  they  were  uttered.  How  far  the  expression  of  these  views  may  have 
been  the  real  cause  of  the  arrests,  for  which  the  suspected  intention  to  pass 
an  ordinance  of  secession  is  the  cause  publicly  assigned,  it  would  not  be 
proper  for  me  here  to  discuss — my  only  purpose  having  been  to  show  that 
such  intention  is  and  has  always  been  falsely  ascribed  to  the  Legislature  of 
Maryland,  and  that  if  our  arrest  was  really  made  upon  that  ground,  it  wag 
as  wanton  as  it  was  cruel  and  unlawful. 

Let  the  cause  have  been  what  it  may,  however,  I  have  good  reasons  for 
believing  that  the  seizure  of  the  members  of  the  Maryland  Legislature  was 
not  made  by  Mr.  Lincoln's  direction  or  authority  at  all.  I  am  justified  in 
thinking  you  will  find  abundant  "evidence,"  upon  proper  and  sufficient 
investigation,  that  the  whole  high-handed  proceeding  was  the  work  of  Mr. 
Seward,  of  his  own  mere  motion,  without  the  previous  knowledge  or  con 
sent  of  the  President,  in  any  shape.  That  Mr.  Lincoln  was,  afterwards, 
induced  to  ratify  it,  of  course,  makes  his  responsibility  the  same  as  if  he 
had  been  its  author,  but  I  am  speaking  only  of  the  facts  as  I  am  confident 
you  will  find  that  they  existed  when  the  arrests  were  made.  What  were 
the  purposes  and  motives  of  Mr  Seward,  you  can  ascertain  more  readily 
than  I.  My  only  knowledge  on  the  subject  is  derived  from  an  official  des 
patch  of  Lord  Lyons  to  Lord  Russell,  bearing  date  November  4, 1861,  and 
published  in  the  Parliamentary  Blue  Book.  I  found  it  in  the  New  York 
Times,  of  March  1,  1862.  His  lordship  reports  in  it  the  substance  of  an 
interview  which  he  had  had,  a  day  or  two  before,  with  the  Secretary  of 
State.  "Mr.  Seward  replied,"  he  says  ".  .  that  as  to  the  recent  ar 
rests,  they  had  almost  all  been  made  in  view  of  the  Maryland  elections"  I 
have  no  comment  to  make,  here,  upon  such  a  disclosure. 
Very  respectfully,  your  obedient  servant, 

S.  T.  WALLIS. 


REPLY   OF   MR.  SHERMAN. 


WASHINGTON,  D.  C.5  December  26,   1862. 
Hem.  S.    Teackle    Wallis: 

SIR  : — Your  letter  of  the  12th  of  December  has  been  received. 

If  I  was  convinced  by  it  that  it  was  not  the  purpose  of  the  Maryland 
Legislature  of  which  you  was  a  member,  to  avail  itself  of  the  first  safe  and 
practicable  opportunity  to  join  the  Confederates  in  rebellion  against  the 
United  States,  I  would  cheerfully  correct  what  I  said  in  the  Senate  of  you 
and  your  colleagues.  As  a  student  of  the  common  law,  I  have  been 
taught  to  regard  the  right  of  personal  liberty  as  the  most  sacred  privilege 
of  a  freeman,  never  to  be  affected  except  for  crime,  or  in  the  case  provided 
by  the  Constitution,  when  the  public  safety  is  jeoparded  by  rebellion  or 
invasion.  If  your  imprisonment  was  not,  in  my  opinion,  within  this  rule, 
I  certainly  would  not  justify  your  arrest. 

The  language  attributed  to  me  in  your  quotation  is  not  accurately  re 
ported.  I  said  in  the  debate  referred  to  : 

"  So  in  the  case  of  the  Maryland  Legislature,  where  the  President  be 
lieved  that  certain  gentlemen  were  conspiring  to  overthrow  the  Govern- 
ment,  not  probably  by  open  force,  but  by  the  exercise  of  their  power  as 
members  of  the  Legislature,  I  believe  the  President  would  have  been 
wanting  in  his  duty  to  his  country  if  he  had  not  arrested  these  men,  and 
detained  them  at  least  until  he  defeated  their  disloyal  and  treasonable 
purposes." 

Your  elaborate  letter  no  where  contains  any  denial  of  the  ' '  treasonable 
and  disloyal  purposes  "  of  the  Legislature ;  nor  is  there  any  denial  that 
they  were  conspiring  the  overthrow  of  the  Government  by  the  exercise  of 
their  power  as  members  of  the  Legislature ;  nor  could  I  fail  to  be  im 
pressed  with  the  entire  absence  of  any  avowal  of  loyal  obedience  to  the 
Government  on  your  part.  Your  letter  confines  the  vindication  of  the 
Legislature  to  a  citation  of  their  proceedings  to  show  that  both  Houses  had 
early  in  the  session  voted  their  opinion  that  they  had  no  power  to  pass  an 
ordinance  of  secession,  and  that  on  the  14th  of  May  they  had  voted  it  inex 
pedient  to  call  a  sovereign  convention.  You  add  your  asseveration  to  the 
truth  of  these  facts,  sufficiently  proved  by  the  record,  and  as  I  understood 
your  letter,  you  pledge  your  personal  veracity  that  there  was  no  intention 
to  pass  such  an  ordinance. 

This  defence,  it  is  apparent,  is  merely  a  technical  denial  of  one  form  of 
arraying  the  State  of  Maryland  against  the  United  States ;  but  it  is  sim 
ply  the  assertions  of  the  accused  party  even  on  that  point,  which  a  few 
moments  in  altered  circumstances  could  reverse :  and,  unfortunately,  the 
evidence  of  their  purpose,  on  the  first  favorable  occasion,  to  defy  the 
United  States  and  resist  its  authority,  is  in  the  possession  of  the  public, 
and  therefore,  probably  of  the  Government,  corroborated  by  the  avowed 


purposes  of  some  of  its  members  just  on  the  eve  of  their  election — your 
own  among  them. 

I  cannot  state  the  facts  affecting  individual  cases,  and  shall  fortify  the 
opinion  expressed  by  me  in  the  Senate  by  events  happening  since  the  com 
mencement  of  the  rebellion,  leaving  to  the  proper  authorities  the  task  of 
designating  individuals  affected  by  them. 

On  the  19th  of  April,  1861,  when  the  blood  of  United  States  soldiers, 
shed  in  your  streets  without  provocation,  was  still  warm,  a  meeting  was 
held  in  Monument  square,  under  the  auspices  of  the  Mayor,  in  which  your 
participation  is  thus  described  in  your  city  papers : 

"  S.  Teackle  Wallis,  Esq.,  was  called  for,  and  responded  in  a  short  but 
forcible  address.  Like  the  Mayor  he  counselled  the  people  to  rely  upon 
the  authorities,  who  would  stand  by  them.  He  had  not  come  to  the  meet 
ing  for  the  purpose  of  making  a  speech,  but  had  come  with  the  Mayor  at 
his  request.  It  was  not  necessary  to  speak.  If  the  blood  of  citizens  on 
the  stones  in  the  street  did  not  speak,  it  was  useless  for  men  to  speak. 

"  He  assured  the  meeting  that  his  heart  was  with  the  South,  and  he 
was  ready  to  defend  Baltimore.  He  hoped  the  blood  of  the  citizens,  shed 
by  an  invading  foe,  would  obliterate  all  party  differences,  and  seal  the 
covenant  of  brotherhood  among  the  people." 

With  that  speech  before  the  people,  not  disavowed,  which  was  an  act 
of  war — a  formal  participation  in  what  had  occurred  and  what  immediately 
followed — you,  on  the  24th  of  April,  with  nine  others,  were  elected  to 
the  Legislature. 

The  Legislature  met  on  the  26th,  and  on  the  27th  of  April — the  day 
on  which  the  Senate  disclaimed  all  constitutional  power  to  pass  an  ordi 
nance  of  secession — both  Houses  passed,  by  a  suspension  of  the  rules, 
the  first  law  of  the  session,  which  is  as  follows : 

"  The  Mayor  and  City  Council  may,1  and  they  are  hereby  authorized  to 
raise  and  appropriate  at  their  discretion,  and  in  the  modes  and  at  the 
times  which  they  may  judge  best,  all  moneys  whatsoever,  which  they  may 
deem  necessary  and  proper  for  the  defence  and  protection  of  said  city, 
and  to  provide  for  the  payment  of  the  same  by  taxation  or  otherwise." 

On  the  same  day,  standing  second  in  the  published  laws,  and  likewise 
passed  by  a  suspension  of  the  rules,  is  an  act  to  confirm  and  ratify  an  ordi 
nance  of  the  Mayor  and  City  Council  of  Baltimore  there  recited,  appro 
priating  $500,000  for  the  purpose  of  putting  the  city  in  a  complete  state 
of  defence  against  any  description  of  danger  arising,  or  which  may  arise 
out  of  the  present  crisis,  the  same  to  be  expended  under  the  direction  of 
the  Mayor  of  the  city. 

That  money  was  appropriated  for  levying  war  against  the  United  States ; 
its  avowed  purpose  was  to  resist  the  transit  of  troops  over  the  usual  and 
direct  route  to  the  Capital,  and  it  was  placed  in  the  hands  of  those  already 
engaged  in  that  resistance.  For,  on  the  afternoon  of  the  19th  of  April, 
Mayor  Brown,  at  the  meeting  in  the  Square,  declared  that  "  he  was  a 
citizen  of  Maryland,  and  would  protect  its  soil  with  his  life,"  against  those 
whom  you  called  the  invading  foe. 

He  was,  by  law,  a  member,  with  Charles  Howard,  Wm.  H.  Gatchell, 
John  W.  Davis  and  Charles  D.  Hinks,  of  the  Board  of  Police  Commis 
sioners,  and  before  midnight  on  the  19th  of  April,  the  Mayor  and  Board 
of  Police  had  ordered  George  P.  Kane,  the  Marshal  of  Police,  to  destroy 
the  railroad  bridges  connecting  the  city  with  the  Northern  States,  and  be- 


10 

lore  daybreak  all  railway  communication  was  at  an  end.  They  had  ar 
rested  the  march  of  the  troops  of  the  United  States  by  a  warlike  operation 
of  the  most  decisive  kind,  and  jeopardized  the  safety  of  the  Capital  and 
the  existence  of  the  Government. 

On  the  same  evening,  before  departing  to  execute  this  order,  Mr. 
Kane,  in  reply  to  a  despatch  from  Bradley  T.  Johnson,  of  Frederick, 
offering  troops,  sent  the  following  despatch : 

"  Thank  you  for  your  offer  ;  bring  your  men  in  by  the  first  train,  and 
we  will  arrange  with  the  railroad  afterward.  Send  expresses  over  the 
mountains  and  valleys  of  Maryland  and  Virginia  for  the  riflemen  to  come 
without  delay.  Fresh  hordes  will  be  down  on  us  to-morrow,  (the  20th.) 
We  will  fight  them  or  die.  GEO.  P.  KANE." 

This  was  posted  in  Frederick,  with  a  placard  as  follows,  signed  by 
Bradley  T.  Johnson: 

"All  men  who  will  go  with  me  will  report  themselves  as  soon  as  possi 
ble,  providing  themselves  with  such  arms  and  accoutrements  as  they  can. 
Double-barrelled  shot-guns  and  buck  shot  are  efficient." 

And  Johnson,  with  what  men  he  could  get,  did  go  down  and  was  taken 
into  the  service  of  the  Mayor  and  Board  of  Police,  on  that  invitation. 
They  had,  in  addition,  a  trained  and  armed  Police  Corps  of  six  hundred 
men.  They  retained  under  their  orders  the  Light  Division,  partly  com 
posed  of  enemies  of  the  Government,  commanded  by  General  Steuart,  its 
avowed  enemy,  which  the  Governor  had  called  out  and  placed  under  them, 
on  the  19th,  for  loyal  purposes.  They  began,  on  the  20th  of  April,  the 
organization  and  arming  of  a  volunteer  force,  limited  only  by  their  capaci 
ty  to  get  men  and  arms,  and  placed  it  under  the  command  of  Isaac  R. 
Trimble  and  Colonel  Hughes,  both  now  in  the  rebel  service. 

On  the  20th  of  April,  it  was,  that  the  City  Council  appropriated  half  a 
million  of  dollars  for  the  defence  of  the  city  against  the  dangers  of  the 
crises — that  is,  against  what  you  described  the  day  before  as  "  the  Invad 
ing  Foe,"  what  Kane  the  day  before  called  "fresh  Hordes,"  what  the 
law  calls  United  States  Troops  marching  to  the  Capital  of  the  nation  :  and 
it  was  that  appropriation  which  the  Legislature  ratified,  in  their  second 
act,  only  seven  days  afterward. 

No  time  was  lost  in  using  the  money.  The  report  of  the  expenditures 
is  before  me ;  and  the  items  will  bear  but  one  interpretation  ;  the  chief  of 
them  are  for  arms  and  ammunition,  $24,174 ;  for  blankets  and  mattres 
ses,  $2,825  ;  for  marine  and  navy,  (embracing  hire  and  alterations  of 
steamers  and  wages  of  men,)  $5,461;  for  rations,  $9,914;  for  pay  of 
officers  and  men,  $7,736  ;  for  horse  and  hack  hire  and  hauling  arms, 
$3,472  ;  for  rent  of  armories  and  repairs,  $1,748.  Such  are  some  of  the 
items  for  provisioning  and  equipping  troops. 

The  Mayor  and  Board  of  Police  bought  1,700  carbines  and  rifles,  4,000 
pikes,  8,194  canister  shot,  7,740  cannon  balls,  4,956  pounds  of  lead,  over 
24.000  ball  cartridges,  150,000  caps,  besides  other  ammunition  and  arms 
otherwise  obtained. 

Thus  armed,  the  Mayor  and  Board  of  Police  Commissioners  took  mili 
tary  control  of  the  city ;  the  port  and  telegraph  lines  to  Washington  and 
Harper's  Ferry,  while  they  cut  those  to  the  North ;  the  running  of  the 
trains  to  Washington  was  arrested,  while  those  to  Harper's  Ferry  were 
continued ;  vessels  were  not  allowed  to  leave  port  with  provisions,  muni 
tions  of  war,  &c. 


11 

No  vessel  could  sail  unless  by  leave  of  the  Board  or  of  Isaac  II .  Trim 
ble,  commanding  their  volunteer  force.  This  system  was  fully  inaugu 
rated  on  the  22d  of  April,  and  on  that  day  Trimble,  in  a  note  to  Chas. 
Howard,  discountenanced  a  military  parade  because  the  "  display  of  mili 
tary  will  be  a  sorry  one,  and  calculated  to  dishearten  our  citizens,"  and 
"  if  represented  abroad  will  rather  invite  and  encourage  attempts  from  the 
North  to  defy  us  and  pass  through  the  city,"  not  to  attack  it.  By  an  or 
der  in  the  minutes  of  the  Board,  on  the  same  day,  Trimble  was  authorized 
to  allow  the  Eastern  Shore  steamer  to  pass,  on  condition  of  not  stopping 
at  Annapolis,  where  General  Butler  then  was ;  and  General  Steuart,  by 
letter  of  that  date,  writes  to  Charles  Howard : 

"  I  know  not  what  to  think  of  the  rumor  from  Annapolis;  but  if  the 
Massachusetts  troops  are  on  the  march  from  that  place  to  Washington,  I 
shall  be  in  motion  very  early  to-morrow  morning  to  pay  my  respects  to 
them." 

During  the  22d  and  23d  of  April  the  telegrams  and  memoranda  found 
in  the  office  of  the  Board,  show  they  were  in  communication  with  Kenton 
Harper,  commanding  six  thousand  rebels  at  Harper's  Ferry;  and  their 
agent  "  reported  six  thousand  men  ready  to  corne  down." 

The  letters  found  further  show  that  Gen.  Steuart  had  applied  to  Gov. 
Letcher,  of  Virginia,  Gen.  Cocke,  at  Alexandria,  and  Harper,  at  Harper's 
Ferry,  for  arms,  and  had  obtained  the  promise  of  5,000  muskets.  Letch  - 
er's  letter  to  Steuart  shows  he  ordered  1,000  to  be  sent,  and  2,000  did 
come  to  the  possession  of  the  Board  of  Police,  and  were  claimed  by  Steu 
art  ;  and  Howard  wrote  to  James  M.  Mason  to  know  if  he  should  deliver 
them  to  Steuart,  for  the  State  of  Maryland. 

Fourteen  hundred  of  them  are  now  in  Fort  McHenry ;  the  correspon 
dence  is  in  the  hands  of  the  Government  officers.  So  open  and  complete 
was  the  state  of  war,  that  Hunter,  commanding  the  United  States  receiv 
ing  ship  in  the  harbor,  wrote  to  the  Board  on  the  23d  of  April,  stating  he 
had  occasion  to  employ  a  steamtug  in  the  service  of  the  United  States,  and 
requesting  them  to  authorize  him  to  use  one  on  that  day  in  the  harbor  of 
Baltimore  and  the  adjacent  waters;  and  that  request  was  respectfully  de 
clined  by  the  Board. 

These  acts  of  war  were  fully  crowned  by  the  order  of  the  Police  Com 
missioners  forbidding  the  display  of  the  National  Flag,  and  the  arrest  of 
loyal  men  who  refused  to  obey  them. 

The  attempt  which  has  occasionally  been  made  to  explain  those  acts  as 
precautions  for  the  preservation  of  the  internal  peace  of  the  State,  or  to 
repel  lawless  incursions  of  armed  men  from  the  North,  is  unworthy  of  fur 
ther  notice.  I  cannot  see  how  a  candid  man  can  be  misled  by  them. 

In  this  state  of  open  war,  the  Police  Commissioners  went  through  the 
forms  of  an  election,  by  which,  on  the  24th  of  April,  you  were  returned 
to  the  Legislature  to  represent  this  rebellious  action,  by  9,000  votes  out  of 
30,000 — 21,000  having  stayed  at  home,  and  no  one  having  dared  to  op 
pose  the  armed  rebellion,  headed  by  the  Police  Commissioners ! 

In  the  flush  of  confident  success,  you  and  your  colleagues  met  at  Fred 
erick  on  the  26th ;  on  the  27th  you  furnished  the  sinews  of  war  to  your 
confederates ;  and  a  Force  bill  was  reported  to  the  Senate,  and  passed  to 
a  second  reading  by  14  to  8,  by  which  the  State  militia  was  reorganized 
and  placed  under  the  power  of  the  six  Commissioners  named  in  the  bill, 
all  avowedly  enemies  of  the  United  States ;  the  Governor  was  stripped  of 


12 

all  power  over  it ;  a  large  sum  of  money  was  appropriated  to  arm  and 
equip  it,  and  the  bill,  if  passed,  would  have  placed  the  State  under  an  ab 
solute  military  despotism  of  the  enemies  of  the  Government,  and  left  your 
loyal  Governor  at  their  mercy. 

But  the  small  vote  revealed  the  radical  weakness  of  the  rebellion  in 
Baltimore;  on  the  28th,  the  Police  Commissioners  began  to  apologize  for 
their  conduct,  and  put  a  softer  color  on  it ;  the  Force  bill  caused  great 
public  indignation  ;  the  Legislature  was  threatened  by  the  loyal  people  of 
Frederick  with  expulsion  if  they  dared  to  pass  it,  and  on  the  3d  of  May 
Baltimore  added  her  protest  and  menace  of  resistance ;  and  the  leaders  in 
the  Legislature  and  their  confederates  out  of  it  began  to  think  of  safety 
while  waiting  events. 

The  Force  bill  was  dropped  ;  on  the  8th  the  Legislature  passed  a  bill  of 
indemnity,  exempting  from  prosecution  or  punishment  the  Mayor  and  Po 
lice  Commissioners  and  all  persons  who  acted  under  their  orders  in  their 
effort  to  maintain  peace  and  good  order,  and  prevent  further  strife  on  and 
after  the  occurrences  on  the  19th  day  of  April,  in  consequence  of  such 
acts,  and  obedience  to  such  orders,  "  and  repealing  all  laws  in  force  in 
this  State  at  the  time  of  said  acts,  so  far  as  regards  said  persons  and  their 
acts." 

In  a  word,  the  Legislature  outlawed  the  United  States  and  their  soldiers  I 

On  the  9th,  the  next  day,  the  Committee  on  Federal  Relations  present 
ed  their  report  and  resolutions;  which  were  adopted  on  the  14th;  but 
which  you  very  inaccurately  describe  as  "a  resolution  against  the  expe 
diency  of  even  calling  a  sovereign  Convention  of  the  people  of  the  State." 

The  resolution  was,  that  "  under  existing  circumstances"  it  is  inexpe 
dient  to  call  a  Sovereign  Convention  of  the  State  at  this  time. 

The  report  shows  a  sudden  variation  in  opinion  on  the  subject;  when 
you  met  on  the  26th  of  April,  Convention  was  the  general  wish  ;  in  less 
than  two  weeks,  on  the  5th  of  May,  the  Committee  tell  us  there  was  an 
almost  unanimous  feeling  against  calling  a  Convention  at  the  present  time. 

Two  weeks  more  might,  under  favorable  auspices,  work  another  revo 
lution  of  opinion. 

"  To  the  Committee,"  the  report  says,  "  the  single  fact  of  the  military 
occupation  of  our  soil  by  the  Northern  troops  in  the  service  of  the  Gov 
ernment,  against  the  wishes  of  our  people,  and  the  solemn  protest  of  the 
State  Executive,  is  a  sufficient  and  conclusive  reason  for  postponing  the 
subject  to  a  period  when  the  Federal  ban  shall  be  no  longer  upon  us." 

The  Federal  ban  might  be  removed  at  any  moment  by  military  disas 
ters,  which  you  were  doing  your  best  to  occasion  ;  and  then  the  question 
of  expediency  would  be  solved  in  a  different  sense.  For  the  resolution 
further  declares  the  State  of  Maryland  owes  it  to  her  own  self-respect  to 
announce  her  resolute  determination  to  have  no  part  or  lot,  directly  or  in 
directly,  in  its  prosecution. 

And  the  reasoning  of  the  report  adds  to  the  significance  of  the  reso 
lution,  for  it  maintains  that,  if,  as  the  Governor  thinks,  the  Constitution 
is  still  over  both  State  and  General  Government,  "then  the  State  of 
Maryland  can  hold  no  neutrality  when  the  Union  is  at  war !  She  takes 
sides  against  it  the  instant  she  fails  to  take  sides  with  it.  Neutrality  in 
such  a  case  is  nullification,-  pure  and  simple,  and  an  armed  neutrality  is 
merely  rebellion  and  not  union."  Differing  from  the  Governor,  however, 
' '  the  Committee  have  no  hesitation  in  asserting  and  maintaining  the  right 


13 

of  the  State,  and  its  duty,  to  protest  against  the  unconstitutional  action  of 
the  Administration,  and  refuse  obedience  to  its  unconstitutional  demands," 
that  action  being  its  war  on  the  rebellious  States,  those  demands  being  for 
troops  from  Maryland.  That  is  "  nullification"  and  "rebellion"  by  the 
confession  of  the  report  formally  declared  by  both  Houses  of  the  Legisla 
ture. 

Still,  the  report  proceeds  further  to  say:  "  The  present  and  only  pos 
sible  attitude  of  the  State  toward  the  Federal  Government  is  an  attitude 
of  submission,  unwilling  and  galling  submission,  on  the  part  of  those  who 
think  and  feel"  as  the  Committee  manifestly  do. 

It  is  frivolous  to  pretend  that  the  Legislature  had  abandoned  the  pur 
pose  of  calling  a  Sovereign  Convention ;  they  merely  wanted  the  removal 
of  the  Federal  ban  to  clothe  actual  rebellion  with  the  forms  of  popular 
sanction  by  calling  a  Convention  to  amend  the  Constitution.  When  they 
met  on  the  4th  of  June,  they  felt  the  "  Federal  ban"  still  on  them,  and 
adjourned  from  the  25th  of  June,  to  the  30th. 

When  they  again  met,  the  ' '  Federal  ban  "  was  still  on  them ;  but  in 
the  meantime  their  confederate,  Kane,  had  been  arrested  by  General 
Banks;  the  Police  Commissioners  had  delivered  the  city  of  Baltimore  to 
anarchy,  and  had  been  arrested — being  men  in  arms,  commanding  armed 
men  who  had  levied  war  on  the  United  States.  A  joint  Committee  of  both 
Houses,  on  the  5th  of  August,  presented  a  report,  which  left  nothing  for  a 
Sovereign  Convention  to  do,  and  resolutions  which  pronounced  the  des 
truction  of  the  bonds  of  the  State  and  Federal  Governments ;  for,  with 
full  knowledge  of  the  conduct  of  the  Police  Board  above  detailed,  which 
they  had  screened  by  a  bill  of  indemnity,  the  Legislature  of  Maryland,  on 
the  7th  of  August,  solemnly  declared  the  arrest  of  Charles  Howard,  Wil 
liam  H.  Gatchell  and  John  W.  Davis,  to  have  been  made  "under  frivo 
lous  and  arbitrary  pretexts,  a  criminal  violation  of  the  plainest  and  dearest 
rights  to  which  American  citizens  are  born ;"  and  pronounced  their  arrest 
"in  their  bearing  on  the  authority  and  constitutional  powers  and  privileges 
of  the  State  a  revolutionary  subversion  of  the  Federal  compact." 

They  dared  do  no  more,  for  the  "  Federal  ban"  was  still  on  them ;  but 
they  adjourned  on  that  day  to  the  14th  of  September,  not  without  hope 
that  the  disaster  of  Bull  Run  might  ere  that  day  remove  the  '  'Federal 
ban,"  and  allow  them  safely  to  end  that  "unwilling  and  galling  submis 
sion,"  in  accordance  with  their  frequently  avowed  purposes  and  their  per 
sistent  efforts. 

Before  that  day  you  were  arrested! 

The  only  circumstance  which  could  justify  the  President  in  permitting 
the  assembling  of  such  a  body — which  had  already  waged  war  against  the 
United  States,  asserted  the  revolutionary  subversion  of  the  Constitution, 
and  avowedly  adjourned  from  time  to  time,  to  await  the  removal  of  the 
"  Federal  ban  "  that  it  might  more  formally  array  the  State  in  arms  against 
the  Government — would  have  been  its  entire  insignificance  or  the  distin 
guished  loyalty  the  people  of  Maryland  had  exhibited  in  the  elections  and 
in  raising  troops.  These  were  considerations  of  policy,  and  I  am  not  in 
clined  to  question  the  President's  judgment. 

But  the  arrest  was  rigidly  legal  and  in  the  forms  of  law ;  for  Congress 
had  authorized  the  President  to  use  military  power  to  suppress  the  rebel 
lion,  and  he  might  lawfully  seize  any  one  engaged  in  it,  or  whom  he  might 
have  reasonable  cause  to  believe  engaged  in  it. 


14 

The  joint  Committee  of  the  Legislature,  of  which  you  .were  one,  de 
clare  that  ' '  the  true  and  only  loyalty  of  a  free  people  consists  in  their 
reverence  for  the  laws  and  Constitution,  and  their  obedience  to  the  tribu 
nals  by  which  these  are  expounded."  I  cheerfully  concur  in  that  defini 
tion  ;  and  those  tribunals  of  the  highest  resort  have  declared  the  law  as  I 
have  stated  it. 

The  Supreme  Court,  by  the  mouth  of  Chief  Justice  Taney,  has  decided 
that  where  the  established  Government  has  resorted  to  the  rights  and 
usages  of  war  to  maintain  itself  and  to  overcome  unlawful  opposition, 
"the  officers  engaged  in  its  military  service  might  lawfully  arrest  any  one 
who,  from  the  information  before  them,  they  had  reasonable  grounds  to 
believe  was  engaged  in  the  insurrection,  and  might  order  a  house  to  be 
forcibly  entered  and  searched,  where  there  was  reasonable  grounds  for 
suppposing  he  might  be  concealed." 

And  Chief  Justice  Marshall,  in  the  same  court,  has  said,  if  war  be  ac 
tually  levied — that  is,  if  a  body  of  men  be  actually  assembled,  for  trea 
sonable  purposes — all  those  who  perform  any  part,  however  minute,  or 
however  remote  from  the  scene  of  action,  and  who  are  actually  leagued  in 
the  general  conspiracy,  are  to  be  considered  as  traitors. 

The  part  the  Legislature  of  Maryland  performed  in  the  war  levied  in 
Maryland,  and  Virginia  and  the  South,  was  neither  minute  nor  remote; 
and  they  exposed  themselves  to  something  more  than  mere  arrest. 

Of  the  indignities  and  indecencies  inflicted  on  you,  I  know  nothing ;  if 
they  existed,  they  are  to  be  greatly  regretted;  but  they  hardly  equalled 
those  heaped  by  your  confederates  on  the  soldiers  of  the  Union. 

I  have  confined  myself  to  designating  the  acts  of  the  Legislature  and 
their  confederates,  which  justify  the  President  in  treating  them  as  public 
enemies.  I  am  ignorant  of  the  opinions  which  you  protest  against  being 
considered  to  have  changed ;  nor  are  they  material.  No  opinion  is  crimi 
nal  under  our  law ;  even  purposes  unaccompanied  by  some  attempt  at  exe 
cution,  however  criminal  morally,  are  legally  innocent ;  but  acts  of  war 
are  the  objects  of  military  suppression,  and  such  were  the  acts  of  the  Leg 
islature  of  Maryland. 

I  regret  to  be  obliged  to  admit  that  some  arrests  have  been  made  by  an 
abuse  of  military  power ;  you  are  not  more  sensitive  to  those  wrongs  than 
I  am,  and  I  have  striven  to  prevent  or  redress  them ;  but,  sir,  you  must 
pardon  me  for  saying  that  your  arrest  is  not  one  of  that  character. 

Respectfully,  your  ob't  ser'vt, 

JOHN  SHERMAN. 


REJOINDER  OF   MR.   WALLIS, 


BALTIMORE,  January  3c£,  1863. 
ffon.  John  Sherman,   United  States  Senate  : 

SIR  : — I  received  on  Sunday,  December  28th,  the  letter  bearing  date 
the  26th,  which  you  addressed  to  me,  in  professed  reply  to  mine  of  the 
12th.  I  find  it  also  in  the  New  York  Times  of  December  31st,  with  an 
editorial  notice  from  which  I  infer  that  it  was  forwarded  to  that  journal,  at 
least  as  soon  as  it  was  transmitted  to  me.  My  own  letter  would  not  have 
been  handed  to  the  World  for  publication,  had  not  the  lapse  of  a  week, 
without  even  an  acknowledgement  of  its  receipt,  given  me  reason  to  sup 
pose  that  you  intended  to  be  discourteous  as  well  as  unjust.  The  tenor  of 
your  reply,  as  you  have  at  last  furnished  it,  does  nothing  to  relieve  me  of 
that  impression,  it  being  obviously  intended  for  a  party  pamphlet,  ad  cap- 
tandum,  instead  of  an  answer,  in  good  faith,  on  the  subject  upon  which  I 
addressed  you. 

You  have  entirely  misapprehended  the  purpose  of  my  letter  of  the  12th, 
if  you  really  suppose,  as  you  profess  to  do,  that  I  desired  or  attempted  to 
convince  you  of  my  own  "loyalty,"  or  that  of  the  Legislature  of  Mary 
land,  to  which  I  had  the  honor  to  belong  in  1861.  I  do  not  mean  to  be 
uncivil,  when  I  assure  you  that  nothing  was  farther  from  my  thoughts, 
and  that  there  are  few  things  to  which  I  could  be  possibly  more  indifferent, 
personally,  than  the  judgment  which  gentlemen  who  bear  your  relation  to 
the  governing  party  in  the  United  States  may  choose  to  form,  in  regard  to 
myself,  my  opinions,  or  my  action.  Still  less  would  I  venture  to  deal  so 
disrespectfully  with  the  General  Assembly  of  Maryland,  as  to  recognize,  in 
you  or  your  partisan  associates,  any  right  or  fitness  to  pass  authoritative 
judgment  upon  them  or  their  official  conduct. 

As  I  understand  the  form  of  government  under  which  the  people  of  this 
country  have,  until  within  the  last  two  years,  supposed  themselves  to  live, 
no  citizen  is  criminally  amenable,  for  his  public  or  private  conduct,  except 
to  the  laws  of  the  land  as  administered  by  the  constituted  judicial  tribunals. 
"No  opinion,"  you  yourself  admit,  "is  criminal  under  our  law,"  and  I 
think  I  may  assume — whether  you  admit  it,  or  not — that  there  are  no  acts, 
for  which  any  citizen  can  be  lawfully  held  to  account,  except  those  which 
the  law  has  forbidden.  No  officer  of  the  Government,  whether  civil  or 
military,  has  any  more  right — as  I  have  been  taught — to  create  offences, 
or  define  them  except  only  as  the  law  prescribes,  than  he  has  to  rob  or 
murder  on  the  highway,  or  proclaim  himself  king  or  sultan.  It  is  of  the 
essence  of  constitutional  government — in  peace  or  in  war,  as  has  always  here 
tofore  been  understood — that  the  Constitution  and  laws  should  be  masters, 
and  public  officers,  like  private  individuals,  only  their  servants.  Beyond 
the  lines  of  their  strict  constitutional  powers,  such  officers  are  as  literally 
without  authority,  before  the  law,  as  the  humblest  citizens;  for  they  are, 


16 

in  fact,  private  wrong  doers,  and  not  public  officers,  from  the  moment  that 
they  have  transgressed  those  constitutional  limits. 

Gentlemen  of  your  way  of  thinking,  however,  have  adjudged  these  rudi- 
mental  and  long  established  principles  to  be  wholly  obsolete,  under  the  sort 
of  government  which  you  need,  and  have  set  up,  to  serve  your  purposes. 
You  have  accordingly  borrowed  from  the  vocabulary  of  despotism,  the  name 
of  "  disloyalty,"  to  designate  that  undefined  and  undefinable  offence — not 
known  to  free  institutions,  but  which  you  have  seen  fit,  in  the  plenitude 
of  your  prerogatives,  to  create — which  consists  in  questioning  the  wisdom, 
canvassing  the  policy,  doubting  the  integrity,  or,  if  need  be,  resisting  the 
corruptions  and  usurpations,  of  those  who  temporarily  hold  and  prostitute 
power.  With  like  propriety  and  consistency  you  have  adopted  the  catch 
word  of  "  loyalty,"  to  indicate  the  equally  undefinable  public  virtues  and 
excellences  which  you  would  have  it  believed  that  yourselves  and  your 
partisans  embody  and  monopolize.  Knowing  no  "loyalty,"  myself,  in 
my  relation  to  the  Federal  Government,  except  that  obedience  which  I 
owe,  as  a  citizen,  to  the  laws  and  Constitution,  lawfully  and  constitution 
ally  expounded  and  administered,  I  repeat  that  I  am  as  free  as  a  man  can 
be,  from  the  slightest  desire  that  you  or  your  fellow  partisans,  or  any  one 
else,  should  esteem  me  "  loyal"  after  your  fashion.  Recognizing,  on  the 
other  hand,  no  "  disloyalty"  to  the  United  States,  except  in  disobedience 
to  the  Constitution  which  my  State  adopted  and  ratified,  when  she  became 
a  member  of  the  Federal  Government,  or  to  the  laws  constitutionally  en 
acted  under  that  instrument,  I  should  probably  feel  myself  honored,  nine 
times  out  of  ten,  by  your  being  pleased  to  consider  me  "  disloyal."  As  to 
the  more  than  Roman  severity  of  the  rebuke,  which  you  assume  the  privi 
lege  of  administering  to  me,  in  saying  that  you  could  not  "  fail  to  be  im 
pressed  with  the  entire  absence  of  any  avowal  of  loyal  obedience  to  the 
Government"  on  my  part,  in  my  letter  to  you — I  must  be  excused  if  I 
cannot  treat  it  with  the  gravity  which  you  seem  to  have  mustered  to  pro 
nounce  it.  I  have  not  yet  learned  that  one  American  citizen  is  under  any 
obligation  to  approach  another — certainly,  in  no  sense,  more  than  his 
equal — with  genuflexions  or  professions  of  faith  or  "obedience"  of  any 
sort ;  and  I  cannot  but  regard  the  professed  expectation  upon  your  part,  to 
the  contrary,  as  an  amusingly  presumptuous  form  of  the  hallucination, 
under  which  gentlemen  of  your  political  connection,  at  this  time,  seem  to 
labor,  when  they  set  themselves  up,  above  the  law  and  its  tribunals,  as  Sie 
judges  and  executioners  of  their  fellow-citizens  and  equals.  It  is  certainly, 
too,  a  new  idea — among  gentlemen,  at  all  events — that  a  request  to  you, 
such  as  my  letter  contained,  to  correct  a  misstatement  of  fact,  should  be 
subject  to  demurrer,  upon  your  part,  because  it  was  not  ushered  in  with  a 
sort  of  governmental  sacrament.  Your  notion  that  the  truth  is  not  entitled 
to  vindication,  unless  it  first  makes  profession  of  "loyalty,"  is  of  kin  to 
the  other  doctrine,  so  popular  with  you,  that  "rebels  have  no  rights." 

But  there  is  still  another  and  a  very  satisfactory  reason,  peculiar  to 
yourself,  why  I  was  especially  careless  about  conciliating  your  good  opin 
ion  in  the  matter  referred  to.  I  have  before  me  a  published  letter  of  yours, 
in  which  you  explain  your  refusal  to  vote,  in  1861,  for  the  resolution  of 
Mr.  Wilson,  of  Massachusetts,  approving  the  suspension  of  the  habeas  cor 
pus  by  Mr.  Lincoln.  You  ^distinctly  state,  in  that  letter,  as  your  reason 
for  withholding  your  vote— not  that  you  disapproved  of  the  President's 
acts — for,  on  the  contrary,  you  "  cordially  approved  and  justified  them" 


17 

— but  that  you  could  not  say,  with  Mr.  Wilson,  that  they  "  were  strictly 
legal,  or  within  his  (the  President's)  delegated  powers."  "  The  legal 
power  to  suspend  the  writ  of  habeas  corpus"  you  add,  "has  been  recently 
claimed  for  the  President ;  but  I  am  convinced  that,  by  the  plain  meaning 
of  the  Constitution,  Congress  alone  must  determine  the  cases  in  which  the 
public  safety  requires  its  suspension"  "  Still,"  you  go  on  to  say,  "there 
are  times  when  our  Executive  officer  must  anticipate  the  action  of  Con 
gress  ;  but,  in  such  a  case,  he  assumes  the  hazard  of  a  '  bill  of  impeach 
ment,'  or  a  '  bill  of  indemnity.'  The  President  merely  assumed  this 
hazard,  and,  in  the  vacancy  of  Congress,  wisely  assumed  a  power  not  dele 
gated  to  him  by  the  Constitution." 

When  a  Senator  of  the  United  States,  bound  by  his  official  oath  to  sup 
port  the  Constitution,  can  bring  himself  to  declare  that  he  cordially  "  ap 
proves  and  justifies,"  in  his  official  place,  the  action  of  the  President  in 
assuming  "  a  power  not  delegated  to  him  by  the  Constitution" — in  other 
words,  that  he  approves  and  justifies  a  sheer,  admitted  usurpation  and  vio 
lation  of  the  constitutional  rights  of  the  citizen,  by  the  Chief  Executive 
of  the  country — who,  outside  of  the  Constitution,  is  nothing,  and  who  has 
solemnly  sworn  "  to  preserve,  protect  and  defend  "  that  Constitution,  "  to 
the  best  of  his  ability,"  and  is  bound,  by  its  paramount  provisions,  to  "  take 
care  that  the  laws  be  faithfully  executed  " — I  must  be  allowed  to  entertain 
my  own  opinion  as  to  the  fitness  of  such  a  Senator,  to  understand  or  ap 
preciate  his  own  relation,  or  that  of  any  other  person,  to  a  constitutional 
government. 

You  will  permit  me  to  add,  that  when  you  addressed  me  the  first  para 
graph  of  the  letter  before  me,  and  after  dwelling  upon  your  veneration, 
"  as  a  student  of  the  common  law,"  for  "  the  right  of  personal  liberty," 
informed  me  that  you  regarded  it  "as  never  to  be  affected  except  for 
crime,  or  in  the  case  provided  by  the  Constitution,  when  the  public  safety 
is  jeoparded  by  rebellion  or  invasion,"  but  said  that  you  thought  the  ar 
rest  and  imprisonment  of  myself  and  my  colleagues  "  within  this  rule," 
you  must  have  lost  sight  of  the  doctrine  of  the  letter  from  which  I  have 
just  quoted.  It  is  difficult  for  a  man,  whose  ideas  are  not  stimulated  by 
the  atmosphere  of  "loyalty"  in  which  you  move,  to  understand  how  you 
can  regard  our  arrest  as  "within  this  rule"  of  the  Constitution,  when 
you  know  that  we  were  arrested  by  Executive  mandate  alone,  without  any 
previous  authority  given  by  Congress  to  suspend  ' '  the  right  of  personal 
liberty,"  and  when  you,  yourself,  have  expressly  declared  that  by  "the 
plain  meaning  of  the  Constitution,  Congress  alone"  and  not  the  President, 
"must  determine  the  cases  in  which  the  public  safety  requires  its  suspen 
sion."  Surely  you  do  not  ask  us  to  believe  that  when  you  used  this  lan 
guage,  in  1861,  and  refused  to  join  Mr.  Wilson  in  saying  that  the  sus 
pension  of  the  habeas  corpus  by  the  President  was  "strictly  legal  or  within 
his  delegated  powers" — you  meant  to  imply,  or  entertained,  the  opinion 
now  suggested  in  your  letter  of  December  26th,  that  Congress,  by  the 
mere  act  of  authorizing  the  President  "to  use  military  power  to  suppress 
the  rebellion,"  ipso  facto  suspended  the  habeas  corpus,  and  rendered  "rig 
idly  legal  and  in  the  forms  of  law"  the  arrest  of  any  and  every  citizen, 
without  oath  or  warrant,  whenever  and  wherever  the  President  in  his  dis 
cretion  might  see  fit.  Yet,  unless  you  do  mean  thus  to  tax  the  credulity 
of  the  public,  I  do  not  see  what  escape  there  is  left  to  you,  from  a  discrep 
ancy  which  is  not  reputable  in  either  a  lawyer  or  a  Senator. 
2 


18 

But  I  cease  to  be  surprised  at  your  thus  relying  upon  the  forgetfulness 
or  ignorance  of  your  readers,  when  I  turn  to  the  quotation  from  the  opin 
ion  of  the  Supreme  Court,  as  delivered  by  Chief  Justice  Taney  in  the  case 
of  Luther  vs.  Borden,  (7  Howard,  45,)  to  which  you  carefully  omit  a  par 
ticular  reference,  but  which  you  cite  as  authority  for  the  monstrous  propo 
sition,  that  the  President  of  the  United  States  and  the  military  officers  un 
der  him,  are  clothed — by  the  mere  pendency  of  a  civil  war  recognized  by 
Congress — with  the  authority  to  arrest  citizens  and  search  houses  all  over 
the  country,  without  process  of  law,  whenever  in  their  judgment  there 
may  be  reasonable  ground  for  doing  so.  No  one  knows  better  than  your 
self,  that  in  the  opinion  from  which  you  made  the  quotation  in  question, 
the  Chief  Justice  was  speaking — as  the  Court  was  passing  judgment — con 
cerning  a  case  in  which  the  military  right  to  make  arrests  and  searches 
was  recognized  as  arising,  not  from  an  implied  Executive  prerogative, 
growing  out  of  the  mere  pendency  of  hostilities,  but  from  a  specific  legis 
lative  act  of  the  State  of  Rhode  Island,  by  which  martial  law  was  ex 
pressly  and  specially  declared,  and  from  which  alone  the  Governor  and  his 
military  subordinates  derived  all  the  authority  which  they  pretended  to  ex 
ercise,  or  the  Court  pretended  to  ascribe  to  them  in  the  premises.  It  would 
not  at  best  have  been  very  creditable  to  you,  as  a  professional  man,  to  in 
sist — even  if  you  had  not  concealed  the  material  facts  of  the  case — that 
the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States  had  in  effect  recognized  the  pre 
rogative  which  you  claim  for  the  President,  in  the  absence  of  express  au 
thority  from  Congress — merely  because  they  had  recognized  it  in  the  Gov 
ernor  of  Rhode  Island,  under  the  express  authority  of  the  Legislature  of 
the  State.  You  could  with  difficulty,  look  a  Court  of  Justice  in  the  face 
and  argue,  upon  such  a  foundation,  that  a  declaration  of  war,  or  a  recog 
nition  by  Congress  of  a  war  or  insurrection  as  existing,  is  ipso  facto,  a 
proclamation  of  martial  law  over  the  length  and  breadth  of  the  republic. 
And  yet  such  is  your  proposition,  and  you  have  kept  back  the  facts  which 
would  have  enabled  your  unprofessional  readers  to  discover,  as  all  your 
professional  readers  know,  how  reckless  your  statement  is,  that  the  Su 
preme  Court  of  the  United  States  have  given  it  their  sanction  in  the  case 
from  Rhode  Island.  You  have  as  carefully  kept  back  the  other  fact, 
equally  well  known  to  you,  that  in  the  memorable  habeas  corpus  case  of 
Merryman,  the  Chief  Justice  of  the  United  States,  to  whom  you  would  as 
cribe  the  atrocious  and  despotic  doctrine  you  are  advocating,  repudiated  it 
with  the  most  emphatic  directness  and  solemnity — interposing,  as  he  best 
could,  between  its  operation  and  the  liberty  of  the  citizen,  all  the  force  of 
his  great  intellect,  the  fullness  of  his  learning  and  wisdom,  the  purity  and 
dignity  of  his  character,  and  the  authority — alas!  helpless — of  his  venera 
ble  age  and  elevated  office.  Happily  you  cannot  keep  back  the  palpable 
and  overwhelming  fact,  that  popular  opinion — seduced  or  frightened  for  a 
while  from  its  propriety — has  already  trampled,  in  its  reaction,  upon  the 
fallacies  and  fictions  with  which  corrupt  politicians  and  venal  lawyers  had 
sought  to  circumvent  the  intelligence  of  the  people,  while  usurpation  laid 
its  hand  upon  their  rights.  Others  are  aware,  if  you  yourself  are  forgetful 
of  the  fact,  that  as  Senator  from  Ohio,  you  no  longer  represent  the  feelings 
or  opinions  of  the  people  of  your  State,  and  that  this  result  is  chiefly  due  to 
their  indignant  repudiation  of  the  arbitrary  and  anti-republican  doctrines, 
of  which  you  are  still  one  of  the  lingering  defenders. 

The  startling  character  of  the  legal  heresies  which  you  have  promulga- 


19 

ted,  and  the  extreme  disingenuousness  of  the  mode  in  which  you  have  pre 
sented  them,  has  led  me,  for  public  reasons,  to  enter  much  further  into 
the  discussion  of  them  than  I  had  wished,  for  I  personally  feel  as  little  in 
terest  in  your  inconsistencies  as  I  do  in  your  opinions.     My  letter  of  the 
12th  December  was  addressed  to  you  concerning  a  matter  of  fact  and  not  a 
matter  of  doctrine.     You  were  reported  in  the  newspapers  as  having  used 
the  language  which  I  quoted  in  that  letter,  concerning  the  members  of  the 
Maryland  Legislature,  who  were  arrested   and  confined  with  me  by  the 
order  of  Mr.  Lincoln  or  Mr.  Seward.     Taking  your  reported  language  in 
connection  with  the  explicit  statement  made,  last  spring,  by  Mr.  Hickman, 
in  the  House  of  Representatives,  upon  the  alleged  authority  of  the  Presi 
dent,  and  with  the  language  used  by  Mr.  Fessenden,  in  the  Senate,  a  few 
days  after  your  observations  were  made — all  of  which  I  referred  to  in  my 
letter — I  understood,  and  had  a  right  to  regard  the  whole  of  you  as  making 
the  charge,  that  the  Legislature  of  Maryland,  when  its  members  were 
arrested,  had  specifically  in  contemplation  the  passage  of  an  ordinance  of 
secession.     I  understood  Mr.  Fessenden  as  further  saying  that  the  Presi 
dent  had  "  evidence"  of  such  intention.     I  took  it  for  granted  that  you 
believed  your  statement  to  be  true  when  you  made  it,  and  I  addressed  you, 
in  perfect  good  faith,  simply  to  let  you  know  that  it  was  not  true  and  ap 
peal  to  your  candor  to  correct  it.     I  presumed  that  you  would  be  glad  to 
do  so,  but  at  all  events  I  felt  it  due  to  myself  and  my  colleagues  and  to 
the  truth,  not  to  leave  uncontradicted  a  misstatenient,  to  which  your  official 
position  and  the  frequent  reiteration  of  the  same  story,  in  Congress,  might 
give  importance  and  credit,  if  it  were  not  denied.     If  it  had  been  a  mere 
expression  of  your  opinion   concerning  the  merits  or  demerits  of  my  col 
leagues  and  myself,  I  should  certainly  have  cared  and  said  nothing  about  it. 
Under  the  circumstances,  your  proper  and  natural  course   was  a  very 
plain  one.     If  you  had  not  asserted  the  fact  which  I  supposed  you  to  have 
asserted,  you  had  but  to  say  so,  and  there  was  an  end  of  the  matter.     If 
you  had  asserted  it  and  had  the  means  of  proving  it  to  be  true,  you  could 
have  refused  to  alter  your  statement,  and  have  produced  your  evidence  or 
declined  doing  so,  in  your  discretion.     If  you  had  asserted  it  and  were 
unable  io  maintain  it,  you  could  have  withdrawn  the  assertion,  or  have 
let  it  stand,  according  to  your  disposition  or  indisposition  to  be  just.     You 
have  done  none  of  these  things.     You  deny  that  you  made  the  statement 
of  which  I  complain,  and  then  reproach  me  for  having  merely  replied  to 
what  you  were  reported  as  saying,  instead  of  anticipating  and  answering 
what  you  were  not  reported  as  saying,  in  the  newspapers  which  I  read,  and 
what,  therefore,  I  had  never  seen.     After  wondering  at  this  and  shudder 
ing  at  the  absence  of  all  "  avowal  of  loyal  obedience,"  in  my  letter,  you 
proceed  to  argue  that  my  whole  communication  was  based   upon  a  techni 
cality.     It  was  a  "  technical  denial,"  you  say — which  you  explain,  to  sig 
nify  that  I  took  issue  with  you  upon  the  isolated  charge  of  our  having  in 
tended  to  pass  an  ordinance  of  secession.     Such  an  ordinance,  you  tell 
me,  would  have  been  "but  one  form  of  arraying  the  State  of  Maryland 
against  the  United  States,"  and  I  have  confined  myself  to  a  denial  of  our 
having  contemplated  that  "form,"  instead   of  defending  the  Legislature 
against  the  general  and  substantial  charge  of  having  intended,  in  some  form 
or  other,  "to  defy  the  United  States  and  resist  its  authority."     I  believe 
I  state  your  point  fairly  and  clearly.     Having  made  it,  you   dedicate   the 
remainder  of  your  letter  to  a  promiscuous  assault  upon  the  Mayor  and  Po~ 


20 

lice  Commissioners  of  Baltimore,  the  proceedings  of  the  Legislature  gen 
erally,  and  my  individual  course  and  declarations,  with  a  large  digression 
upon  the  history  of  the  excitement  in  Baltimore  on  and  after  the  19th  of 
April,  1861.  From  all  of  these  things  you  draw  and  assert  the  conclusion 
that  we  were  all  lawfully  and  justifiably  arrested  and  imprisoned — whether 
we  intended  or  did  not  intend  to  pass  the  ordinance  of  secession,  which  was 
the  exclusive  topic  of  my  letter. 

Now,  I  do  not  know  how  all  this  may  strike  the  mass  of  the  partisans 
who  read  the  Times,  and  for  whom  you  wrote  your  letter,  but  it  seems  to 
me  that  the  class  for  whom  a  Senator  of  the  United  States  ought  to  write, 
will  see,  at  a  glance,  that  it  is  a  mere  evasion  and  a  clap-trap.  Who  was 
it  that  raised  and  framed  the  issue  as  to  the  intention  of  the  Legislature  of 
Maryland  to  pass  an  ordinance  of  secession  ?  Not  I,  certainly,  but  Mr. 
Lincoln,  and  Mr.  Hickman,  and  Mr.  Fessenden,  and  yourself,  as  I  saw 
your  speech  reported.  You  were  the  accusing  parties.  You  had  the 
' '  evidence  "  before  you — or  you  ought  to  have  had — when  you  attempted 
to  justify  the  outrage  which  had  been  inflicted  upon  us.  You  framed  your 
indictment,  and,  in  order  to  escape  the  just  reproach  of  making  loose  and 
random  and  indefinite  accusations,  and  of  having  deprived  men  of  their 
liberty  without  specific  and  ascertained  cause  therefor,  you  selected, 
among  you,  and  agreed  upon  the  charge  that  we  had  intended  to  throw  our 
State  out  of  the  Union  by  adopting  a  secession  ordinance.  You  put  that 
fact  forward,  of  your  own  choice,  as  the  burden  of  our  guilt  and  the  cor 
ner-stone  of  your  justification.  The  President  of  the  United  States, 
speaking  through  Mr.  Hickman,  not  only  made  the  accusation  in  words, 
but  with  his  usual  graceful  playfulness,  when  men's  dearest  rights  are  in 
question,  had  his  joke  about  "  the  pockets"  in  which  the  "  resolutions  of 
secession"  were  to  have  been  carried  to  Frederick.  The  Government 
newspapers,  in  Baltimore  and  elsewhere,  teemed,  at  the  time  of  our  arrest 
and  afterwards,  with  stories  about  the  mysterious  ' '  ordinance."  The  ruf 
fians  who  were  sent  by  the  Secretary  of  State  to  our  dwellings,  at  mid 
night,  to  seize  upon  our  correspondence  and  rifle  our  desks  and  safes, 
spoke,  openly,  in  the  presence  of  the  inmates  of  our  houses,  concerning 
the  existence  of  such  an  ordinance  in  the  possession  of  some  us,  and  of 
their  instructions  to  search  for  it.  In  my  own  case,  they  were  for  six  or 
seven  hours  in  pursuit  of  it,  with  all  the  ingenuity  and  the  appliances  of 
more  respectable  burglars.  Produce,  or  get  the  President  to  produce  att 
the  official  papers  connected  with  our  arrest,  and  I  will  almost  be  witting  to 
stake  my  whole  case  on  the  fact,  that  they  will  be  found  to  specify  our  in 
tention  to  pass  such  an  ordinance,  as  the  precise  offence  creating  the  necessi 
ty  for  the  suppression  of  the  Legislature.  In  more  than  one  of  the  pub 
lic  journals,  it  was  mentioned — and  repeated  long  afterwards  at  the  North, 
when  I  was  in  Fort  Warren — that  an  "  ordinance,"  supposed  to  be  in  my 
handwriting,  had  actually  been  delivered  to  the  Secretary  of  State,  whose 
delight  at  the  possession  of  such  a  treasure  was,  one  day,  rudely  put  an 
end  to,  by  the  discovery  that  it  was  a  forgery — the  work,  as  was  stated, 
of  some  "  loyal"  clerk  in  his  own  office,  whom  I  had  once  prosecuted  for 
a  former  crime.  I  do  not  know  that  the  story  was  false,  for  it  was  not 
officially  promulgated — nor  do  I  know  that  it  was  true.  I  refer  to  it,  and 
to  the  other  circumstances  which  I  have  mentioned,  in  order  to  show  that 
when  the  intended  passage  of  an  ordinance  of  secession  was  set  up  as  our 
offence,  and  as  the  justification  for  our  arrest,  the  design  of  the  Govern- 


21 

ment  was  specifically  to  fix  upon  us  that  specific  "  treasonable  purpose." 
I  had  no  reason  or  right  to  believe  that,  instead  of  meaning  what  they 
said,  and  what  they  charged,  the  President  and  his  defenders  meant  some 
thing  else,  and  not  what  they  said  and  charged.  I  had  no  right  or  rea 
son  to  suppose  that  a  general,  indefinite,  treasonable  mind  and  purpose, 
not  concentrated  in  any  particular  act,  was  all  that  was  meant  to  be  as 
cribed  to  us,  and  that  when  I  denied  the  specific  and  oft  repeated  accusa 
tion,  upon  which  all  of  you  agreed,  I  should  be  told  that  it  was  a  "  tech 
nical  denial,"  and  that  I  ought  to  have  entered  upon  a  defence  of  the  Po 
lice  authorities  of  Baltimore,  the  difficulties  on  and  after  the  19th  of  April, 
and  the  proceedings,  at  large,  of  the  Legislature.  If  I  had  done  so,  would 
you  not  have  been  the  first  to  say  that  I  had  guiltily  evaded  the  real  and 
vital  question  ?  If  I,  or  some  other  person  interested,  had  not  denied  that 
we  intended  to  pass  the  ordinance  in  controversy,  would  you  not  have  as 
sumed  and  have  claimed  the  right  to  assume,  that  such  an  intention  was 
justly  ascribed  to  us?  And  if,  after  gentlemen  of  high  position,  like  the 
President  and  members  of  Congress,  have  themselves  deliberately  selected 
and  framed  and  tendered  an  issue  of  fact,  they  call  the  denial  of  the  fact 
in  issue  a  technicality,  as  you  do,  what  reason  have  I  to  assume  that 
they  will  not  again  do  the  same  thing  ?  What  grounds  have  I  for  believ 
ing  that  you  mean  to  stand  by  the  fresh  statements,  in  your  letter,  of 
what  you  call  facts,  any  more  than  by  the  other  alleged  fact  of  the  ordi 
nance  of  secession,  by  which  you  now  refuse  to  stand?  Would  I  have 
any  security,  after  showing  the  untruth  and  futility  of  them  all,  that  you 
would  not  say  I  had  written  a  series  of  "technical  denials"  of  isolated 
facts,  and  that  the  broad  fact  of  my  general  "  disloyalty,"  or  that  of  some 
of  my  friends  and  acquaintances,  was  all  that  you  had  intended  to  charge  ? 
There  is  no  arguing „  permit  me  to  say,  with  gentlemen  who  adopt  that 
style  of  reasoning.  You  furnish  more  than  one  striking  illustration  of  its 
vices  in  the  very  case  before  us.  You  would  have  it,  for  instance,  that  it 
made  no  difference  to  the  President,  and  makes  none  in  the  argument, 
whether  the  Legislature  of  Maryland  was  about  to  pass  an  ordinance  itself, 
or  to  call  a  Convention  which  might  do  the  same  thing.  The  one  inten 
tion,  if  you  are  to  be  credited,  would  have  been  as  good  a  justification  as 
the  other,  for  tho  arrest  of  the  Legislature.  You  can  hardly  mean  this, 
although  you  say  it.  Any  ordinary  person  who  did  not  desire  to  arrest  for 
the  mere  sake  of  arresting,  would  suppose,  that  when  the  purpose  of  the 
President  was  to  prevent,  by  summary  arrests,  the  passage  of  an  ordinance 
of  secession,  he  would  arrest  only  those  who  intended  to  pass  it,  and  that 
instead  of  arresting  the  Legislature  for  intending  to  call  a  Convention,  he 
would  not  even  arrest  the  members  of  the  Convention  itself,  until  he  had 
reasonable  certainty  that  they  intended  to  do  the  act  which  he  feared. 
Certainly  it  ill  becomes  you  to  assert  that  the  intention  of  calling  a  Con 
vention  would  have  been  a  "  treasonable  and  disloyal  purpose,"  when  the 
"  entire  insignificance  "  which  your  courtesy  ascribes  to  the  Legislature, 
and  the  "  distinguished  loyalty  "  with  which  it  clothes  the  people  of  Mary 
land,  must  render  it  quite  certain,  in  your  judgment,  that  a  Convention, 
if  called,  would  have  triumphantly  overturned  the  Legislature  and  seces 
sion  together.  But  the  point  is  not  worth  pursuing  farther.  Your  reply, 
I  repeat,  is  an  evasion  and  not  a  maintenance  of  your  position.  My  denial 
was  not  a  "  technical  denial,"  but  a  denial  as  substantial  as  the  deliberate 
and  intentional  charge  which  it  repelled. 


22 

It  is  no  part  of  my  purpose  to  follow  you  through  the  long  array  of  alle 
gations  and  insinuations,  outside  of  the  only  question  between  us,  by  which 
you  endeavor  to  bolster  up  the  justice  of  the  proceedings  which  for  so  long 
deprived  the  Mayor  and  Police  Commissioners  of  Baltimore  and  the  mem 
bers  of  the  State  Legislature  of  their  liberty.  I  have  no  means  whatever 
of  access  to  the  documents  which  you  profess  to  cite  or  to  the  correspon 
dence  which  you  say  "  is  in  the  hands  of  the  Government  officers,"  and 
upon  which  you  found  your  principal  impeachment  of  the  fidelity  of  the 
police  authorities.  I  cannot  tell  to  what  extent  they  exist,  or  what  is  their 
authenticity.  But  having,  as  a  member  of  the  Legislature,  examined  and 
fully  approved  the  course  of  the  Police  Board,  I  know  enough  of  the 
facts  to  justify  me  in  declaring  that  the  statements  in  regard  to  them,  of 
which  you  have  allowed  your  letter  to  be  the  vehicle  to  the  public,  are 
partial,  garbled  and  unjust,  and  frequently  untrue.  I  willingly  persuade 
myself  that  you  have  been  deceived  into  promulgating  them,  for  I  fancy 
that  I  can  see  in  them  the  work  of  hands  which  are  not  yours,  but  which 
private  disappointments  and  malice,  and  local  interests  and  hatred,  have 
made  the  perpetual  bearers  of  falsehood  and  malignant  counsels  to  the 
Executive  chamber,  during  the  whole  long  agony  of  this  wretched  war. 
If  you  had  reflected,  for  an  instant,  it  seems  to  me  that  you  would  not 
have  permitted  yourself  to  enter  upon  a  crusade,  under  such  guidance. 

It  is  now  nearly  eighteen  months  since  the  Baltimore  Commissioners  of 
Police,  then  prisoners  illegally  confined  at  Fort  McHenry,  presented  their 
respectful  memorial  to  the  two  Houses  of  Congress.  They  protested  their 
innocence  of  any  offence  against  the  laws  of  the  country ;  insisted  upon 
their  right  to  be  informed  of  the  accusations  against  them ;  invited  scru- 
t'ny  into  their  whole  conduct,  private  and  official,  and  asserted  "  their 
readiness  to  meet,  without  a  moment's  delay,  any  charge  which  might  be 
responsibly  laid  against  their  individual  or  official  proceedings."  Suggest 
ing  their  inability  to  obtain  redress,  pending  the  suspension  of  the  habeas 
corpus  in  Maryland,  they  "respectfully  and  earnestly  invoked  the  imme 
diate  interposition  of  Congress  in  their  behalf."  That  memorial  was  treat 
ed  with  open  indignity  and  contempt.  From  the  moment  of  its  presenta 
tion,  down  to  this  hour,  neither  the  Senate,  of  which  you  are  a  member, 
nor  the  lower  House,  has  given  any  heed  to  their  complaints,  or  taken  one 
step  towards  the  vindication  of  their  rights  or  of  public  liberty  or  justice 
in  their  behalf.  You  have  not  given  them  the  accusations  against  them 
(if  any)  or  the  names  of  their  accusers.  You  have  not  afforded  them  an 
opportunity  of  even  proving  their  innocence,  much  less  have  you  allowed 
them  a  public  hearing  or  trial,  before  either  a  Congressional  committee  or 
the  constituted  judicial  tribunals.  Grand  jury  after  grand  jury,  selected 
by  a  Marshal  of  Mr.  Lincoln's  appointment,  (to  say  nothing  of  grand  ju 
ries  of  the  State,)  has  met,  since  they  were  taken  from  their  homes  in 
July,  1861.  At  least  one  Federal  grand  jury  has  deliberately  investi 
gated  the  whole  proceedings  which  you  have  discussed  in  your  letter,  with 
all  the  evidence  in  the  possession  of  the  Government  before  it — including, 
of  course,  everything  to  which  you  have  had  access,  in  order  to  prepare 
the  defence  of  the  Government  which  you  have  published.  Yet  no  bill 
of  indictment  has  been  found,  or  could  be  procured  to  be  found.  The 
House  of  Representatives,  certainly — and  perhaps  the  Senate  also — called 
upon  the  President  to  state  the  grounds  upon  which  the  gentlemen  in 
question  were  arrested  and  imprisoned,  but  the  President  refused  the  infor- 


23 

mation,  as  "  incompatible  with  the  public  interests."  You  were  all  satis 
fied  with  that  refusal,  and  there  you  and  those  who  think  and  side  with 
you — representatives  of  a  people  calling  itself  free,  and  boasting  yourselves 
the  special  apostles  of  freedom — allowed  the  case  of  your  oppressed  and 
helpless  fellow-citizens  to  rest,  unheard,  unconsidered — scorned.  There 
was  not  a  man  of  you,  who  could  rise  above  the  level  of  political  and  sec 
tional  vindictiveness  to  an  act  of  simple,  common  justice,  much  less  to  vin 
dicate  a  great  principle,  or  to  strike  an  honest  blow  for  public  and  private 
freedom.  You  allowed  the  victims  to  languish,  for  nearly  a  year  and  a 
half,  in  prison  after  prison,  to  which  they  were  dragged — you  emancipa 
ting  negroes,  the  while,  by  the  thousand,  as  the  President  now  is,  by  the 
million.  And  now  that  the  prisons  have  been  opened,  and  the  prisoners 
in  question  released  without  condition — not  willingly,  but  because  public 
opinion  had  demanded  it,  at  the  ballot-box,  and  the  gathering  storm  of 
public  retribution  was  too  portentous  to  be  longer  disregarded — you,  a 
Senator,  who  have  aided  in  doing  all  this  injury,  are  not  ashamed  gratuit 
ously  to  attack,  at  an  unfair  advantage,  through  the  columns  of  a  newspa 
per,  the  men  whom  you  have  so  long  refused  to  charge,  or  hear,  or  try, 
publicly,  fairly,  openly,  and  where  they  could  meet  their  accusers  face  to 
face,  according  to  their  rights  and  your  obligations.  You  consent  to  gath 
er  up,  from  "  the  hands  of  Government  officers"  and  local  informers,  for 
publication  against  them,  ex  parte  statements  and  apocryphal  scraps,  to 
the  sources  and  originals  of  which  they  have  no  access  for  challenge  or 
disproof,  and  under  pretext  of  replying  to  a  letter  from  me,  upon  a  differ 
ent  subject,  which  you  evade,  you  thus  seek  to  cover  the  retreat  and  the 
shame  of  the  Government  and  your  own  dereliction  of  duty.  Do  you 
think  this  is  worthy  of  you,  as  a  gentleman  or  a  Senator  ?  Do  you  think 
it  honorable — nay  even  decent — in  the  Executive,  or  his  subordinates,  ir 
responsibly  to  furnish  to  you,  in  such  a  way  and  for  such  purposes,  what 
Mr.  Lincoln  alleged  that  it  would  be  "  incompatible  with  the  public  in 
terests"  to  disclose  to  you,  as  a  member  of  the  Senate,  to  be  used  legiti 
mately  and  responsibly,  for  public  ends,  in  your  official  place  and  sphere  ? 
If  the  incompatibility,  which  he  pretended,  has  now  ceased  to  exist,  why 
does  he  not  respond  to  the  requisition  of  Congress,  as  becomes  him,  in 
stead  of  privately  retailing  his  "  evidence"  to  you  for  the  pages  of  a  par 
ty  journal  ?  If  the  President  and  his  Secretaries  of  State  and  War  are 
really  able  to  establish  the  case  against  the  Police  authorities,  which  you 
have  set  up  for  them,  why  have  they  not  done  so  ?  Why  has  no  grand 
jury  been  able  to  find  an  indictment  against  the  alleged  criminals  ?  If 
there  are  letters,  and  minutes,  and  telegrams  of  the  parties  in  question, 
which  would  condemn  them,  as  you  pretend,  and  of  which  the  President 
and  his  Secretaries  have  control,  why  are  they  not  produced,  openly  and 
upon  official  responsibility,  before  some  tribunal  honest  and  fearless  enough 
to  drag  out  the  whole  truth  and  bring  the  accused — or  the  accusers — to 
shame  and  justice  ?  You  know  very  well  that  the  Mayor  of  Baltimore, 
and  Messrs.  Howard  and  Gatchell,  two  of  the  Police  Commissioners,  dur 
ing  the  whole  of  their  long  imprisonment,  defied  and  denounced  the  arbi 
trary  power  and  conduct  of  the  government,  demanding  their  release  as  a 
right,  and  refusing  to  purchase  it  by  the  shadow  of  a  concession.  You 
know  that  they  were  at  last  discharged,  without  yielding  the  ninth  part  of 
a  hair.  Do  you  think  that  Mr.  Seward  and  Mr.  Stanton  are  magnanimous 
and  benevolent  persons,  likely  to  give  way  to  such  contumacy,  where  they 


24 

have  only  to  produce  against  the  recusants,  from  the  files  of  their  detective 
office,  conclusive  evidence  of  treason  ?  Is  there  one  word  you  have  said  in 
your  long  letter,  to  demonstrate  the  justice  of  the  arrest  of  these  gentle 
men,  which,  if  true,  would  not  make  it  as  rigidly  the  sworn  and  bounden 
duty  of  Mr.  Lincoln,  upon  his  theory  and  yours,  to  retain  them  in  custody 
still,  for  trial  and  punishment  ? 

State  the  thing  as  you  may,  sir,  it  is  not  a  thing  for  either  you  or  the 
Executive  to  be  proud  of.  Your  mode  of  dealing  with  the  guilt  or  inno 
cence  of  men  and  their  liberty,  is  at  variance  with  the  institutions,  the 
habits,  the  very  instincts  of  a  free  people,  whose  love  of  justice  and  fair 
play,  and,  let  me  add,  of  truth — has  not  yet  been  entirely  debauched  away 
by  their  representatives  and  rulers.  I  will  not  do  the  injured  men  in  ques 
tion  the  wrong,  nor  public  sentiment  the  outrage,  nor  myself  the  discredit, 
of  submitting  their  case  to  your  arbitrament,  or  to  trial  upon  your  news 
paper  impeachment.  I  assert,  now,  as  a  matter  within  my  own  knowledge, 
that  when,  as  one  of  the  counsel  of  the  Police  Commissioners,  I  visited 
General  Banks  with  my  colleagues,  on  the  very  day  when  the  arrest  was 
made,  General  Banks,  who  had  made  it,  assured  us,  explicity,  that  there 
was  no  charge  against  our  clients,  impeaching  their  integrity  in  any  way, 
and  that  they  had  been  arrested  chiefly  by  way  of  precaution.  I  state, 
further,  from  my  personal  knowledge  also,  that  on  the  20th  of  April, 
1861,  when  I  accompanied  the  Mayor  of  this  city  to  Washington,  where 
he  had  been  invited  by  Mr.  Lincoln  for  consultation,  the  President  him 
self,  in  the  presence  of  his  whole  Cabinet  and  of  Lieut.  Gen.  Scott,  as  well 
as  of  my  companions  and  myself,  more  than  once  volunteered  to  declare, 
that  he  had  carefully  investigated  the  conduct  of  the  Police  authorities  of 
Baltimore  on  the  19th  of  April,  and  was  entirely  satisfied  that  they  had 
discharged  their  duty  in  good  faith,  and  to  the  best  of  their  ability.  No 
member  of  the  Cabinet  ventured  to  gainsay  the  judgment  of  the  Presi 
dent,  although  the  Mayor,  with  perfect  frankness,  informed  them  that  in 
conjunction  with  Gov.  Hicks,  the  Police  Board,  of  which  he  was  a  mem 
ber,  had  ordered  the  destruction  of  the  bridges — that  "  warlike  operation,'7 
which  you  denounce  as  treason  in  the  concrete.  As  the  name  of  ex-Gov 
ernor  Hicks  has  been  recently  added  to  the  list  of  patriots  and  statesmen 
who  adorn  the  Senate,  on  the  "  loyal "  side,  his  certificate  upon  the  ques 
tion  may  perhaps  weigh  somewhat  in  your  judgment.  If  you  will  turn 
to  his  late  Excellency's  message  to  the  Legislature  of  Maryland,  on  the 
25th  of  April,  1861,  you  will  find  him  declaring  that  "the  Mayor  and 
Police  Board  gave  to  the  Massachusetts  soldiers  (on  the  19th)  all  the  pro 
tection  they  could  afford,  acting  with  the  utmost  promptness  and  bravery." 
I  trust  that  after  reading  it,  you  may  modify  to  some  extent  the  lawyer- 
like  proposition  of  your  letter,  that  it  was  an  overt  act  of  treason  for  the 
Legislature  of  Maryland  to  pass  the  act  for  the  protection  of  the  Police 
authorities,  which  you  declare  to  have  "  outlawed  the  United  States  and 
their  soldiers."  That  statute  did  not  pretend  to  impair  private  rights  or 
remedies,  as  the  indemnity  law  recently  passed  by  the  House  of  Represen 
tatives,  in  Mr.  Lincoln's  behalf,  so  unblushingly  and  absurdly  does.  Surely 
you  do  not  mean  to  intimate  it,  as  your  opinion,  that  Mr.  Lincoln's  indem 
nity  act  "  outlaws "  not  only^  the  thousands  who  have  been  his  victims, 
but  the  whole  of  the  citizens  of  the  States  over  whom  he  has  brandished 
the  sword  of  martial  law.  If  you  do,  I  trust  that  the  country  will  hear 
from  you  in  the  Senate,  and  not  through  the  Times. 


25 

But  I  have  dwelt  too  long  on  this  branch  of  the  subject.  I  undertake 
to  promise  you,  in  leaving  it,  that  whenever  the  President  of  the  United 
States,  on  his  own  responsibility,  will  give  to  the  late  Police  authorities  of 
Baltimore  an  opportunity  of  confronting  their  accusers,  and  of  being  heard 
and  judged  as  free  men  may  submit  to  be,  without  surrendering  their  rights 
and  self-respect,  they  will  vindicate  their  conduct  from  every  just  reproach, 
to  the  satisfaction  of  all  whose  good  opinion  is  worth  having.  If  you 
doubt  what  I  say,  you  have  only  to  have  the  experiment  made.  I  think 
I  may  add  that  the  gentlemen  named  will  manage  to  find  for  themselves  a 
way  of  bringing  the  matter  before  some  legitimate  tribunal,  where  some, 
at  least,  of  those  who  have  been  engaged  in  "outlawing"  them,  will  have 
an  opportunity  of  ascertaining  how  far  the  justification  you  have  set  up  is 
well-founded,  in  fact  or  law. 

I  pass,  now,  to  your  assault  upon  the  Maryland  Legislature,  con 
cerning  which,  and  its  proceedings  as  challenged  and  grossley  dis 
torted  and  misrepresented  by  you,  I  propose  to  enter  into  but  little 
discussion.  It  is  due,  however,  to  my  colleagues  from  Baltimore  and 
to  myself,  that  I  should  deny,  in  the  most  unqualified  manner,  the  truth 
of  the  statement  which  you  make,  that  our  election  was  but  a  "  form,"  and 
that  we  were  chosen  only  because  "  no  one  dared  to  oppose  the  armed  re 
bellion,  headed  by  the  Police  Commissioners."  Among  all  the  wholesale 
fictions  with  which  you  have  been  furnished,  by  your  collaborators  here, 
there  is  not  one  more  profligate  than  this.  I  assert,  what  no  man  of  ve 
racity  will  deny  here — under  his  own  signature,  and  alleging  fact  in  veri 
fication  of  his  denial — that  from  the  time  of  the  inauguration  of  the  Board 
of  Police  of  Baltimore  in  the  spring  of  1860,  down  to  the  hour  of  its  sup 
pression  by  military  force,  in  the  summer  of  1861,  the  freedom  of  the  bal 
lot-box  and  of  access  to  it  was  as  sacredly  and  perfectly  guarded  and 
maintained  for  all  citizens,  of  all  parties  and  opinions,  as  ever,  under  any 
system,  was  or  could  be  possible.  I  challenge  the  production  of  any  charge 
to  the  contrary,  from  the  worst  partisan  or  the  most  corrupt  press  among 
us,  until  after  the  suppression  of  the  Board  had  rendered  slander  neces 
sary  to  vindicate  usurpation.  I  assert,  and  am  ready  to  prove,  whenever 
a  single  fact  to  the  contrary  is  alleged,  that  the  preparations  for  securing 
a  free  and  fair  election,  on  the  24th  of  April,  1861,  were  as  ample  and  in 
as  good  faith  as  ever  before,  and  that  no  man  in  the  whole  community — 
not  even  the  most  rabid  and  obnoxious  and  unworthy  partisan — would  have 
met  with  the  slightest  obstacle,  in  voting  for  any  candidates  whom  he  might 
have  preferred.  Indeed  I  challenge  proof  to  the  contrary,  when  I  further 
assert,  that,  during  the  whole  of  the  excitement  which  occupied  and  fol 
lowed  the  19th  of  April,  the  Board  of  Police  extended  to  every  citizen  of 
Baltimore  the  most  ample  and  efficient  protection  in  person  and  property, 
and  that  security  in  both  were  actually  had,  by  all,  amid  the  heats  of  the 
/strife  which  occurred  and  was  impending,  to  an  extent  which  puts  to  shame 
the  contemporaneous  condition  of  the  large  cities  of  the  North.  You  may 
doubt  or  disbelieve  this,  honestly,  I  admit.  But  it  is  true  nevertheless. 
You  have  no  right  to  doubt  it,  because  it  was  officially  stated  to  you  by  the 
Mayor  and  City  Council,  in  their  memorial  to  Congress,  in  1861,  and  by 
the  Board  of  Police  in  theirs,  and  an  investigation  of  its  truth  was  respect 
fully  and  earnestly  besought  at  your  hands,  which  you  refused.  But  I  do 
not  wonder  at  your  doubting  it,  amid  the  crowd  and  press  of  falsehoods 
with  which  your  partisans,  here  and  elsewhere,  have  overwhelmed  the  his- 


26 

tory  of  those  times,  during  the  imprisonment  and  absence,  and  the  en 
forced  silence,  of  those  whom  you  have  all  joined  in  endeavoring  to  crush 
for  their  opinions.  That  many  persons,  apprehending  further  military 
collision,  left  the  city  with  their  families,  for  the  time,  is  undoubtedly  true. 
That  others,  who  probably  are  your  special  informants,  ran  incontinently 
away,  in  sheer  fright,  when  there  was  not  the  slightest  danger  to  them  or 
theirs,  is  equally  true,  and  it  is  quite  natural  that  these  last  should  mag 
nify  the  dangers  before  which  their  own  heroism  quailed.  But  that  any 
man,  of  any  party,  who  asked  protection  from  the  Police,  had  any  difficulty 
in  obtaining  it,  or  that  any  citizen  of  Baltimore  had  any  real  reason  for 
seeking  personal  safety  in  flight,  is  wholly  untrue.  Least  of  all,  as  I  have 
said,  is  there  any  ground  for  intimating  a  question  as  to  the  perfect  free 
dom  of  the  ballot-box  on  the  24th  of  April.  The  vote  was  small,  be 
cause  there  was  but  one  ticket  in  the  field;  yet,  although  T  was  a  mem 
ber  of  the  delegation  elected,  I  will  not  allow  false  delicacy  to  prevent  me 
from  saying,  that  I  believe  it  was  personally  unexceptionable  to  the  great 
mass  of  the  people.  It  was  composed  of  men  of  business,  who  were  not 
professional  politicians  and  who  generally  were  known  to  be  men  of  char 
acter,  intelligence,  and  moderation  in  their  views.  To  many  of  them,  the 
acceptance  of  such  a  place  was  well  known  to  be  a  sacrifice.  To  myself 
it  was  a  serious  one,  which  only  a  sense  of  duty  as  a  citizen  prevented  me 
from  refusing  to  encounter.  Of  the  delegation,  the  majority  had  been 
prominent  members  of  the  old  Whig  party — some  ot  them,  at  one  time, 
active  members  of  the  American  party.  I  believe  that  we  should  have 
been  fairly  and  easily  elected,  by  an  overwhelming  majority,  over  any  op 
position  that  might  have  been  presented ;  and  I  know  that  if  there  had 
been  any  opposition,  it  would  have  found  the  ballot-box  as  free  as  we  found 
it,  and  would  have  been  fairly  dealt  with,  by  the  Police  authorities  and 
ourselves.  If  you  really  believe  that  we  never  represented  more  than 
nine  thousand  voters  out  of  thirty  thousand  in  the  city ;  that  the  rest  of 
the  State  was  of  "  distinguished  loyalty ;"  that  our  support  grew  smaller 
and  smaller,  from  day  to  day,  afterwards,  and  that  we  were  actually  fright 
ened  from  our  intention  of  adopting  measures  of  treason,  by  the  "  threat 
of  expulsion  "  on  the  part  of  the  "  loyal  people  "  of  the  town  of  Freder 
ick — to  say  nothing  of  the  "  menace  of  resistance"  from  Baltimore — I 
should  be  pleased  to  know  in  what  consisted  the  danger  which  Mr.  Lin 
coln,  or  any  one  else,  had  a  right  to  apprehend  from  us.  What  pretext 
or  excuse  had  he  for  arresting  us,  when  in  addition  to  this  local  security 
and  our  "  entire  insignificance,"  he  had  armed  possession  of  the  whole 
State,  and  had  the  Governor  to  aid  him  in  disarming  its  inhabitants? 

You  entirely  misapprehend — you  certainly  misrepresent — the  state  of 
things  in  Baltimore  on  and  immediately  after  the  19th  of  April,  1861.  It 
was  a  reign  of  comparative  unanimity  in  feeling  and  opinion — not  a  reign 
of  terror.  The  facts  have  been  concealed  from  you,  or  distorted,  or  falsi 
fied,  to  answer  the  purposes  of  your  informants.  When  I  made  the  speech 
to  the  people,  on  the  19th,  of  which  you  have  quoted  an  absurd  and  false 
report,  I  was  conducted — nay,  almost  forced  to  the  stand,  by  one  of  the 
most  prominently  "loyal"  gentlemen  of  Baltimore — immaculately  "loyal," 
now  as  then — who  not  only  applauded  what  I  said,  to  the  echo,  but  con 
gratulated  me  upon  having  said  it,  when  I  had  finished.  It  was  but  a  few 
days  afterwards,  that  he  invited  me  to  join  a  company  he  was  organizing, 
to  support  the  authorities !  My  poor  remarks,  on  the  occasion  referred  to, 


27 

were  received  with  tremendous  cheering,  by  crowds  of  citizens — "  Union 
men"  then  and  theretofore — many  of  whom  are  so  desperately  "  loyal"  even 
now,  that  you  may  count  on  their  support  to  the  Administration  and  the 
war,  to  the  overthrow  of  every  vestige  of  the  Constitution,  except  the 
clause  which  secures  "  the  obligation  of  contracts."  I  have  had  recent  ac 
cess  to  an  autograph  subscription-list  containing  the  signatures  of  many 
leading  mercantile  houses  of  the  most  unconditional  and  uncompromising 
"  loyalty,"  and  now  in  the  very  bosom  of  the  true  faith,  with  yourself — 
wherein  they  attested  the  sincerity  of  their  respect  for  the  motives  and  pur 
poses  of  the  authorities,  on  the  19th  of  April,  by  subscribing  amounts,  set 
opposite  to  their  names,  for  the  purpose  of  purchasing  arms,  to  be  used  un 
der  the  direction  of  the  Board  of  Police.  I  dare  say  the  list  will  be  given 
to  the  public,  before  long.  It  was  probably  with  these  arms — for  there 
were  scarcely  any  others — that  the  Baltimore  American,  since  and  now  the 
organ  of  the  Government  here,  and  certainly  the  very  glass  and  mould  of 
"  loyalty"  among  us,  suggested  on  the  20th  of  April,  that  the  Northern 
troops  should  be  met  "  beyond  the  limits  of  the  city" — a  suggestion  how 
ever  which  the  Police  authorities  did  not  see  fit  to  adopt.  It  was  only  the 
day  before,  that  the  same  patriotic  journal,  in  its  afternoon  issue,  had  said 
— in  words  similar  to  those  which  you  ascribe  to  me  on  that  point — and 
which,  with  some  unimportant  modification  of  language,  I  did  certainly 
use — that  "  the  blood  of  our  citizens,  shed  in  our  streets,  is  an  irresistible 
appeal  to  us  all  to  unite  as  Marylanders."  The  appropriation  of  half  a 
million  by  the  Mayor  and  City  Council  of  Baltimore,  which  you  denounce 
the  Legislature  for  having  ratified,  was,  at  once  and  spontaneously,  made 
effective  by  a  voluntary  tender  of  the  whole  amount,  as  a  loan,  on  the  part 
of  the  banks,  on  the  very  day  of  the  adoption  of  the  city  ordinance.  I 
was  present  at  the  Mayor's  office  on  that  day,  when  a  committee  of  bank 
officers,  as  "  loyal"  as  yourself  or  General  Butler,  made  tender  of  the 
money  to  his  Honor,  and  I  well  remember  the  jubilant  satisfaction  which 
the  chairman  expressed  at  having  been  authorized  to  do  so.  Nothing,  I 
am  sure,  would  be  more  difficult  than  for  you  to  convince  all  the  worthy 
gentlemen  to  whom  I  have  alluded,  that  they  did  what  would  have  justi 
fied  the  President  in  sending  them  to  Fort  Warren,  instead  of  taking  coun 
sel  with  them  and  theirs,  as  he  has  done,  to  suppress  the  '"  disloyal  ele 
ment."  You,  doubtless,  remember  the  fine  specimen  of  elegiac  composi 
tion  which  issued  from  Fort  McHenry,  when  the  proprietor  of  the  Ameri 
can  was  torn  from  his  "  sorrowing  wife  and  daughters"  and  shut  up  "  in  a 
depot  of  traitors"  for  a  day  or  two,  because  of  his  precipitate  attempt  to 
sell  an  account  of  the  "  grand  strategic  movement"  to  Harrison's  Land 
ing ! 

I  could  give  you  a  host  of  other  examples,  to  illustrate  the  public  una 
nimity  which  I  have  described  as  existing.  They  will  not  be  hidden  much 
longer  under  a  bushel,  I  imagine — but  I  presume  you  will  be  satisfied  with 
a  single  additional  one.  Indeed,  I  do  not  see  how,  in  examining  the  re 
port  of  the  proceedings  in  Monument  Square,  on  the  19th  of  April,  you 
could  have  been  withdrawn,  by  the  observations  ascribed  to  so  humble  an 
individual  as  myself,  from  the  speech  of  your  present  colleague,  then  his 
Excellency,  Governor  Hicks,  upon  the  same  occasion.  If  you  had  taken 
the  trouble,  you  would  have  learned  how  that  "  loyal "  citizen  and  officer 
than  and  there  declared  that  "  he  had  had  three  conferences  with  the  Mayor, 
and  they  had  agreed  upon  every  point  presented " — and  further  that  "  he 


28 

was  a  Marylander  and  would  sooner  have  his  right  arm  cut  off  than  raise 
it  against  a  sister  Southern  State  /"  I  am  sure  you  must  have  seen,  from 
your  obvious  familiarity  with  the  proceedings  of  the  Legislature,  how  in 
his  opening  message,  a  few  days  after,  the  Governor  showed,  by  his  cor 
respondence,  that  he  had  remonstrated  against  the  sending  of  any  more 
troops  through  Maryland,  and  had  protested  to  General  Butler  against  the 
landing,  at  Annapolis,  of  the  division  commanded  by  that  person.  If  this, 
and  what  I  have  said  before,  be  not  sufficient  to  satisfy  you  that  every 
body  ought  not  to  be  hanged,  who  was  naturally  and  painfully  excited  by 
the  shedding  of  the  blood  of  our  people  in  our  streets  and  by  the  barbar 
ous  threats  of  Northern  presses  and  mobs,  and  who  desired  to  avert  the 
shedding  of  more  blood — let  it  at  all  events  furnish  you  with  a  test  of  Mr. 
Lincoln's  impartiality  in  the  use  of  his  supreme  prerogatives.  Consider 
Governor  Hicks,  I  pray  you,  as  a  Senator  of  the  United  States,  with  his 
right  arm  as  yet  unamputated,  and  Mr.  Brown  and  myself — who  vowed 
no  limbs  to  the  surgeon — as  prisoners  just  released  from  Fort  Warren, 
after  fourteen  months  of  ruthless  captivity ! 

Four  charge  that  the  members  of  the  Legislature  were  only  deterred  by 
fear  or  menace  of  popular  violence  from  adopting  such  measures  as  they 
deemed  expedient,  is  as  untrue  as  the  charge  already  refuted,  that  the  elec 
tion  of  the  Baltimore  delegation  was  the  result  of  illegal  pressure  upon 
the  voters.  I  am  quite  sure  that  no  definite  threats  of  popular  outrage 
ever  reached  the  Legislature  to  my  knowledge ;  and  certainly  no  one  at 
tached  any  importance  to  them,  if  they  were  made.  There  was  some  fool 
ish  talk,  among  a  few  excitable  people  at  Frederick,  which  I  have  no  doubt 
there  were  knaves  enough  to  encourage;  but  I  know  that  it  was  only 
laughed  at,  and  the  parties  who  were  guilty  of  it  knew  better  than  to  carry 
it  beyond  the  swagger  of  the  bar-rooms.  The  "  Force  Bill,"  as  you  call 
it,  was  not  passed,  simply  because  it  was  both  inexpedient  and  at  variance 
with  the  Constitution  of  the  State,  in  the  judgment  of  the  large  majority 
of  the  members  of  the  Legislature,  who  were  opposed  to  it.  If  we  had 
deemed  it  otherwise,  we  should  not  have  hesitated  or  feared  to  pass  it;  but 
although  it  went  to  a  second  reading  in  the  Senate,  the  opposition  to 
it  on  the  part  of  the  members  of  the  House  became  so  decided,  as  soon  as 
its  provisions  were  generally  canvassed,  that  it  was  recommitted  in  the  Sen 
ate,  and  died  in  committee.  I  never  knew  of  the  existence  of  the  bill,  or 
of  the  purpose  to  introduce  it,  until  after  it  was  printed  and  had  passed  to 
the  second  reading ;  and  I  do  not  believe  that  more  than  one  or  two  mem 
bers,  at  farthest,  of  the  Baltimore  delegation  were  better  informed.  I  know 
that  we  were  unanimously  opposed  to  it,  as  soon  as  we  knew  what  it  was. 

So  much  for  the  measures  which  we  did  not  pass,  and  which  you  seem 
to  consider  as  justifying  our  arrest,  quite  as  decidedly  as  those  which  we 
adopted.  For  these  last  I  have  no  apology  or  explanation  to  make,  to  you 
or  to  any  one.  I  have  reviewed  them,  carefully  and  calmly,  and  am 
ready  to  stand  by  them  all.  Of  the  position  which  they  gave  to  the 
State,  upon  the  great  questions  which  have  severed  the  Union,  I  am  proud, 
as  in  my  last  letter  I  said  to  you.  The  sad  experiences  of  the  interme 
diate  time  have  given  them  a  sanction  and  a  confirmation,  which  no  candid 
or  rational  man  can  dispute*  Those  measures  constitute  the  whole  of 
what,  as  a  Legislature,  we  did,  or  thought  it  proper  and  practicable,  and 
within  our  legitimate  sphere,  to  do  ;  and  the  frank  and  explicit  manner  in 
which  our  conclusions  in  regard  to  the  war,  its  causes,  conduct  and  con- 


sequences,  were  promulgated  and  officially  communicated  to  the  Govern 
ment — even  after  the  armed  forces  of  the  United  States  had  full  posses 
sion  of  the  State,  and  the  President  had  disregarded  the  habeas  corpus, 
and  had  arrested  and  imprisoned  the  Police  authorities  of  its  chief  city — 
would  have  satisfied  a  fairer  man  than  yourself,  that  it  was  a  libel  to  charge 
us  with  "conspiring,"  or  with  being  intimidated  from  the  execution  of 
purposes  which  we  entertained.  With  these  measures  and  the  recorded 
opinions  of  the  Legislature  before  the  world,  I  could  not  falsify,  if  I 
would,  the  position  which  we  occupied.  Nor  can  you.  We  believed 
the  war  to  be  unjust  and  unconstitutional — brought  about  by  the  aggres 
sions  of  the  Northern  people  upon  the  rights  of  the  South,  and  portend 
ing  a  military  despotism  to  both  sections.  We  believed  the  restoration 
of  the  Union,  by  force  of  arms,  to  be  a  cruel  absurdity  and  impossi 
bility,  and  we  desired  and  implored  the  Government  of  the  United  States 
to  give  us  peace,  upon  the  only  terms  on  which  we  believed  it  to  be  possi 
ble — the  recognition  of  Southern  indepencence.  In  a  quarrel  in  which  we 
believed  the  South  to  have  the  right  on  its  side,  our  sympathies  were,  of 
course,  with  the  South,  and  they  were  strengthened  by  habits,  ties,  asso 
ciations,  and  commo*  institutions  and  interests.  We  were  satisfied  that 
the  troops  which  were  passing  through  the  State  to  Washington — and 
which  Mr.  Lincoln,  in  my  hearing  and  that  of  his  Cabinet,  on  the  21st  of 
April,  1861,  solemnly  declared  to  be  intended  only  for  "the  defence  of 
the  Capital,"  and  not  for  invasion — were  meant  to  subjugate  the  Southern 
States.  We  believed  that  they  were  destined,  sooner  or  later,  to  be  the 
bearers  of  an  Emancipation  Proclamation,  and  to  stir  up  servile  insurrec 
tion.  We  regarded  them,  therefore,  as  Governor  Hicks  had  styled  them, 
in  his  letter  to  General  Butler,  as  "Northern  troops" — on  an  unlawful, 
sectional  and  unconstitutional  errand,  to  which  the  pretence  of  "  restoring 
the  Union"  gave  no  sanction  in  our  eyes.  We  believed  the  people  of  the 
State  of  Maryland,  in  the  event  of  the  dissolution  of  the  Union,  to  have 
the  right  of  determining  to  which  of  the  two  sections  their  feelings  and 
interests  inclined  them,  and  we  had  no  doubt  that,  upon  that  naked  ques 
tion,  three-fourths  of  them,  at  least,  would  seek  to  join  their  destinies  with 
those  of  the  South.  These  opinions  we  had  the  unquestioned  right  to  en 
tertain  and  to  express,  and  we  did  so.  You  will  find  them  all  openly  pro 
claimed  in  the  reports  and  resolutions  which  the  Legislature  adopted. 
They  are  my  deliberate  opinions,  still,  and  I  know  of  no  change,  in  regard 
to  them,  among  my  colleagues.  But  though  they  were  our  opinions, 
we  knew  and  felt  that  we  were  not  the  people  of  Maryland,  and  that 
we  had  no  right,  as  a  mere  legislative  body,  to  pass  an  ordinance  of  seces 
sion,  or  to  revolutionize  the  State,  or  to  alter  its  government,  or  to  plunge 
it  into  war,  of  our  own  motion.  These  things  were  for  the  people  them 
selves  to  determine  on,  and  to  do  or  to  leave  undone ;  and  I  solemnly  as 
severate  that  it  never  entered  into  the  plans  or  purposes  or  contemplation 
of  the  Legislature,  to  substitute  itself  for  the  people,  in  these  regards,  or 
to  "  conspire"  to  do  so.  We  should  undoubtedly  have  placed  our  people 
in  a  condition  to  defend  themselves  and  the  State  against  lawless  aggres 
sion  from  the  General  Government,  if  we  had  been  able  to  do  it  This  was 
our  duty,  and  it  was  the  constitutional  right  of  the  people,  and  subsequent 
sufferings  and  wrongs  have  demonstrated  its  paramount  necessity.  If  we 
could,  we  should,  beyond  all  peradventure,  have  prevented  the  suppression 
of  the  municipal  government  of  Baltimore  and  the  General  Assembly  of 


30 

the  State,  and  the  substitution  of  a  military  commandant,  and  his  will,  for 
the  laws  and  Constitution  of  Maryland.  We  should  never  have  permitted 
the  illegal  arrests,  the  searches  and  seizures  without  oath  or  warrant, 
which  have  trodden  out  the  fundamental  guaranties  of  freedom  among  us 
We  should  not  have  tolerated  the  suspension  of  the  habeas  corpus  at  Mr. 
Lincoln's  pleasure,  or  the  suppression  of  newspapers  and  free  speech,  or 
have  allowed  a  Judge  to  be  dragged,  bleeding,  from  the  Bench,  as  in  the 
case  of  Judge  Carmichael,  because  he  had  given  the  provisions  of  the  Con 
stitution,  securing  the  liberty  of  the  citizen,  in  charge  to  a  grand  jury. 
Least  of  all  would  we  ever  have  consented  that  an  "  election"  should  be 
held  and  directed  and  consumated  in  Maryland,  under  the  proclamation  of 
a  General  of  the  United  States  army.  Of  all  this  you  may  rest  assured. 

Unhappily,  however,  we  were  powerless,  and  we  knew  and  felt  it.  The 
people  were  unarmed  and  defenceless.  The  Governor  of  the  State  was  a 
reckless  partisan,  who  subordinated  his  duties  to  his  passions,  and  had  no 
greater  respect  for  his  State  or  himself,  than  to  permit  one  of  his  official 
proclamations  to  be  contemptuously  "countermanded,"  through  the  news 
papers,  by  a  recruiting  captain  of  United  States  volunteers  in  Baltimore. 
We  could  have  nothing  to  hope  from  such  an  Execute — his*  "right  arm" 
to  the  contrary  notwithstanding.  Being  less  unscrupulous  than  he,  we 
would  not  invade  his  constitutional  province,  and  without  doing  so  we 
could  do  nothing  that  required  Executive  co-operation.  For  even  the  pro 
tection  of  our  people,  therefore,  the  execution  of  our  laws,  and  the  pas 
sive  maintenance  of  the  dignity  and  constitutional  rights  of  our  State, 
we  were  helpless.  How  absurd  to  contemplate  us  as  in  an  aggressive  and 
belligerent  attitude  towards  the  Government  and  armies  of  the  United 
States !  Your  grave  attempt  to  set  up  the  doctrine  that  our  mere  legis 
lative  proceedings — laws  passed  and  resolutions  adopted  by  us,  as  a  State 
Legislature — were  "overt  acts"  of  treason,  under  a  ruling  of  Chief  Jus 
tice  Marshall's,  will  not  deceive  any  one  who  has  access  to  the  horn-book 
of  our  common  profession.  If  our  resolutions  were  foolish — or  wicked,  as 
you  would  have  it — they  were  still  merely  the  expression  of  opinions.  If 
our  laws  were  unconstitutional,  they  were  simply  void,  and  the  peril  was 
to  those  only  who  might  happen  to  act  under  them.  You  have  aided  in 
passing  too  many  unconstitutional  laws,  yourself,  for  any  one  to  doubt,  who 
has  observed  your  public  career,  that  you  are  altogether  aware  of  your  im 
punity,  as  a  legislator,  in  doing  so. 

I  believe  I  have  answered  whatever  it  is  proper  I  should  answer  in  your 
letter.  I  have  done  so,  necessarily  at  great  length  and  with  much  incon 
venience  to  myself,  in  view  of  my  health  and  occupations.  I  have  only 
answered  you  at  all,  because  1  felt  that  you  had  taken  an  unfair  advantage 
of  my  previous  letter,  and  I  did  not  choose  you  should  do  so  unnoticed. 
The  cold  blooded  and  unmanly  comment  which  you  make  on  my  reference 
to  the  indignities  and  indecencies  of  our  treatment,  as  prisoners,  would 
have  deprived  you  of  any  right  to  a  reply,  as  a  matter  of  respect  to  you. 
If  it  were  possible  that  the  Confederate  Government  had  in  fact  dealt  as 
brutally  with  prisoners,  as  we  were,  at  times,  treated,  it  would  have  seemed 
small  reason  why  you  should  select  such  brutality  as  the  only  point  for 
imitation.  You  are  a  better:  judge,  however,  than  I  am,  of  the  views  of 
your  political  associates,  and  I,  therefore,  presume  you  speak  advisedly, 
when  you  indicate  that  the  Administration  revenges  upon  kidnapped  and 
helpless  citizens  of  the  United  States — who  have  nothing  to  rely  on  but 


31 

its  sense  of  justice  and  humanity — the  wrongs  which  it  professes  to  have 
received  from  enemies  in  arms. 

I  am,  Sir,  you  obedient  servant, 

S.  T.  WALLTS. 


14  DAY  USE 

I  RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 

LOAN  DEPT. 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below,  or 

on  the  date  to  which  renewed. 
Renewed  books  are  subject  to  immediate  recall. 


3Aui'6540 

WOnf  EC  J?™  t  tJ""*1 

REC'D  LD 

OCT^/  b8-7  r^iv 

ljUL2Q'fi5-4J>AL 

LOAN  DEPT. 

• 

. 

1       AUG  28  1967 

LD  21A  40m  4  '63                                      General  Library 

CIRCULATION  DEPARTMENT 


